She nodded, not taking her eyes off her display screens. “How did it go?”
“You have a daughter-in-law full of useless knowledge on the way.”
“Nice family?”
“They didn’t say much, and they left right after we shook on it.”
“Probably afraid they’d back out.” The captain rotated her chair to face the helm, where Adem’s sister Lucy reclined in the piloting chair. While linked, she saw through the ship’s cameras and sensors.
Lucy spoke through the bridge intercom. “Hello, little brother. How is Sarat?”
Adem refused to take the bait. “Did you get enough shopping done on the station?”
Lucy’s sigh was amplified and dehumanized by the intercom’s processors. “Can I ever? And it will be out of style by the time we come back.”
“The time after that it will all be vintage and in high demand,” Adem said. “You can sell it back at a profit.”
“True. Did you buy me a new little sister?”
“A future math and science genius. Most likely spliced. Her parents are smart enough, but they don’t have the genes for it. You’ll have a lot to talk about when we pick her up.”
Lucy had spent her teens and early twenties on Versailles Station to get the modifications necessary for piloting the Hajj. She’d had a wonderful time and never let anyone forget it.
“How close are we to leaving?” the captain said.
“Ten minutes, Mother, dear. Right on schedule.”
Adem yawned. “I’ll go back to the engineering section to keep an eye on things.”
“There’s a leak in the plumbing you might want to sniff out,” Lucy said. “Wouldn’t want our profits to go toward replacing water volume.”
“I don’t suppose you’d tell me where it is.” Linked to the Hajj, Lucy could probably feel the leak.
“That wouldn’t be nearly as fun as making you crawl through all the conduits,” she said.
“I’m on it.” Adem nodded to his mother. “Captain.”
His mother waved, her eyes fixed on her readouts. There was nothing she could see that her daughter could not, but she was protective of the old ship. Her own mother had been captain before her, and her grandmother before that. She had spent years as ship’s pilot before upgrades made her obsolete. Adolescent brains adapted better to the modifications.
“Say hello to Sarat for me,” Lucy called after him.
Adem stopped by his quarters to leave his bag. The bottle of bourbon he’d purchased with Sarat in mind clunked against his bed as he set the bag on the floor. The continuous vibration he felt in his feet shifted in frequency as his sister moved the big ship out of orbit.
The ship’s mass-grav system made a million calculations every second as it struggled to cope with the velocity changes. The vibration increased until Adem felt it in his teeth and the roots of his hair.
Adem’s great-grandmother declared her family had left God behind when they fled to the stars. What God, after all, would have allowed His creation to be so utterly destroyed? Even so, the old woman would mutter to herself in Arabic at the start of every trip: “In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate…” Adem heard the words in his head now, and knew that, on the bridge, his mother was hearing them, too.
Adem swayed as natural physics warred with ancient Earth science. Science won once again, and the Hajj slipped away from Gaul back into space.
JOAO & HADIYA
Versailles City, Fév 21, 3236
“Did we do the right thing?” Hadiya Sasaki put her hand on the small of her back and got up to pace the apartment. Her belly preceded her like a small moon.
“We’ve had this conversation many times,” Joao said. He took his wife by the hand.
“Let’s have it again.”
Joao exaggerated a sigh. “If we had not made her a bride, she would have been an illicite. If she had been illicite, she would be dead, or we would be in prison. The arrangement will give her a better life.”
Hadiya nodded, biting her lip at a pain deeper than the contraction that had jolted her into motion. “It’s just that she is so tiny.”
“She will be twenty-four when it is time to leave us. That is not so small.”
“And what will she think of us?”
Joao took Hadiya’s other hand. They stood together in silence for a moment.
“She will see it as it is,” Joao said. “A chance to get out of the shit her parents lived in.”
“Don’t say that word.”
“It’s just a word.” Joao massaged the small of her back. “Are you feeling better?”
“It’s not just a word,” she said. “You are not shit. Our daughter is not shit.”
“It takes shit to make flowers,” Joao said, “and my life is a garden full of them.” He gestured around the small living room. “I couldn’t have dreamed of this when I was a boy. There were seven of us in a room this size, with a bathroom shared by eight families.” He helped Hadiya back to her seat.
“And all it cost us was our daughter,” Hadiya said. “The Trader never smiled. Do you remember that? I can’t imagine our daughter loving such a cold man.”
Joao kissed Hadiya on the cheek. “Rest today. I will clean the apartment when I return from work. I want to see you perched on pillows, eating sweets, and watching vids when I get home.” He smiled. “After I clean and make dinner, I’ll read to her.”
“I don’t understand why you are so interested in reading that old poetry to her. She doesn’t understand Japanese.”
“I don’t know much of it myself. But I want my little girl to know her heritage.”
“What about her Turkish side? She’s more Turk than Japanese!”
“Have you ever heard Turkish poetry?” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you really want to expose her to that?”
“I’ve never heard Turkish poetry, and I bet you haven’t, either.”
He laughed. “We’ll try some on Sunday.” Joao knelt and nuzzled his wife’s ear. “Remember, if she were not to be a bride, then neither could you be. I had to tie you to me in some way.”
She slid her hand along his cheek. “You bound me the day we met. Such a grubby little boy, full of dreams and poetry.”
“Your grubby little ronin. Ready to lay down his life for love and family.” He lifted the hem of her shirt and kissed her belly. “We should get her a pet.”
“Only the rich have pets.”
“We have riches beyond money, my empress.” He bowed to her. “Besides, it will be a little pet and not until she is older. I will save up.” He put on his hat. “Until I see you again, my love.”
She put her fingers to her lips and blew him a kiss. “Until I see you again, grubby boy.”
Joao took the stairs to save money. The ten flights down were not so bad, but coming up after a long day, he sometimes made a different choice.
Versailles City had been built in a crater, the first structures dug into the walls and rim and protected by an overhang made from ejecta. It had grown upward and inward from there, its atmosphere held in place by an artificial inversion. The original families, the rich families, still lived on the city’s edge in a district they called La Mur. Joao waited at the shuttle stop at the end of his block and looked for familiar constellations in the early morning sky. La Mur and midtown had the wealth, but the view of the stars was far better from the center.
He sipped at the water in his distiller and tried not to sweat. Hadiya was sad now, but that would change when the baby was born. They would read to the little girl and teach her the family stories. In time, as all children did, she would leave. But she would leave home with the future at her feet instead of crushing her shoulders.
The ground shuttle approached, belching from its meal of waste hydrocarbons and garbage. The driver triggered the door as it pulled to a stop. “Hello, rich man,” he said. “Are you ready to work with the peasants today?”
“Jakkasu.” Joao slapped the man on the shoulder
and climbed into the passenger compartment. Compared to the other workers, he did live in luxury now, but that was only because of the money the Sadiqs provided. The Trader couldn’t have his bride living in the heart of La Merde; what would all the other spacemen think?
The shuttle was full of bleary-eyed workers, most of them sleeping off their nightly inebriation. Some of them, from the smell, had only crawled out of the bar to meet the shuttle. Joao walked past four rows of seats before sliding in next to his friend, Davet.
Davet blinked his eyes open. “Do you have a bottle?”
Joao shook his head. “I, unlike you, my friend, have something to live for.”
“Then what good are you?” Davet grunted and tried to find a more comfortable slouch in the hard plastic seats. He rarely had a good word to say, but Joao liked him anyway. Davet was an educated man; he had been a teacher in La Mur before he got too involved with a student and was driven away. Joao had asked him once if she had been worth it, and Davet hadn’t talked to him for six days. He had not risked it again, because he loved to talk to the man about poetry and history.
Davet blew his nose on his sleeve. “What are you reading to your daughter tonight?”
“Ryuichi.”
Davet nodded. “Not as much of a hack as some.”
The older man looked weary. As a teacher, he had probably carried his middle-class heaviness well. Now, in exile, the skin hung in folds from his face. The other workers called him Hound Dog.
“Where did you sleep last night?” Joao said.
“Under a table. Under a bridge. It doesn’t matter. No rain fell on my head.”
It hadn’t rained for a month, and the next scheduled shower was more than twenty days away.
“Did you eat?”
“I am not hungry.”
Joao pulled his sandwich out of his pocket. “Amuse me. I made a bet with my wife that you lived only on words. If I am wrong, I sleep on the couch tonight.”
Davet unwrapped the sandwich. His hands were shaking. “I can’t have you living happy in such times.” He chewed the sandwich with a mouthful of broken teeth. “Thank your wife for me.”
Joao pulled a packet of protein shake out of another pocket. “She will be even crueler to me if you wash it down with this.”
Davet finished the sandwich and sucked on the shake’s built-in straw. “You may have saved my life today.” He grunted. “I am not sure whether to thank or curse you.”
Joao grinned. “Why should you escape when the rest of us are stuck in this misery?”
The shuttle took them through La Merde to the oxygen works. The works had been designed to be automated, but refugees had turned out to be cheaper and easier to replace than robots. The machines that still functioned had been pulled into service elsewhere.
The shuttle came to a stop outside the factory gates and the workers filed off, running the barcodes tattooed on their palms over the reader so the company could dock their paychecks for the daily ride. Only a few workers lived near enough to the oxygen works to walk. The din from its twenty-four hour operations kept all but the poorest and deafest from settling nearby.
A ragged man with a sign sprawled against the wall to the left of the gate. Joao squinted, his reading skills warring with the man’s poor spelling. “Spare a coin for a comrade,” the sign read. The man was missing both legs below the knee. Blood still blossomed among the bandages layered over the man’s stumps.
Joao knew the machine that had taken the man’s limbs. After all, he stood over it most of the day and lived in fear of a similar injury. He tossed a coin into the man’s bowl for luck.
“Paying the reaper?” Davet said. Joao had not realized his friend had come alongside him. “He doesn’t have use for such. What would he spend it on?”
“A good lunch,” Joao said. “And a pet for his daughter.”
Joao used his barcode to clock in and walked to his machine. He pulled two dirty wads of cloth out of his breast pocket and jammed them into his ears. It was a poor substitute for real hearing protection, but half-deaf was better than all. His eyes would have to fend for themselves until he saved up enough for goggles.
The job was mind-numbingly difficult. All day, Joao watched the conveyor belt and used a long hook to move rocks around so they would feed evenly into the machine. If too many large rocks went through at once, the crusher would jam, and he would be out of work. Rocks that were too big a mouthful for the crusher had to be pulled off and sent back up the line to be broken up. Joao had started out there, but his attention to detail won him a promotion. He’d saved his back at the expense of his ears and had enough money that he could take the lift in his building occasionally.
The men took lunch in staggered shifts, and by the time Joao’s break came around, his stomach was growling. He studied the vending machines along the wall before opting for a biscuit and a cup of water, the cheapest things he could buy, and a seat near the wall. The water turned the dust in his mouth to mud, and he fought the urge to spit it out. The dense biscuit settled in his stomach like cement. Joao sipped at his water and read poetry off his cheap reader.
When his break was over, Joao returned to shift more rocks, the poetry only half-understood in his mind. Sometime later an alarm nearly caused him to drop the jagged stone he had just pulled off the belt onto his foot. The machinery around him rumbled into silence, leaving only dust and startled cries in the air.
Joao grabbed at the sleeve of a man who ran past. “What happened?”
The man pulled free and continued running. “Accident!” he said over his shoulder. “Crusher Twelve.”
Joao followed the man and pushed past the rubberneckers to the machine’s side. Davet had made a mistake, or maybe one of the large rocks had been too heavy for him. Either way, he had stumbled onto the belt and been pulled part-way under before the emergency stop cut in. Joao knelt next to his friend.
Davet’s eyes were wide and sober as the blood rushed out of his ruined body. He smiled when he saw Joao. “You wasted your lunch.”
His voice was barely more than a whisper. Joao leaned closer to grip his friend’s undamaged shoulder. “Rest,” he said. “We will get you to the hospital.”
Davet coughed, but it might have been a laugh. Blood exploded from his mouth. When the spasm passed, he took in a ragged breath, and his eyes found Joao again. “She was worth it. I wish I could have done more for her.” He coughed more blood and this time did not inhale. His body relaxed.
The supervisor stepped into the circle of workers. “Back to work.” She spoke into the microphone clipped to her shoulder, and her voice echoed off the silent machines. “I need a cleanup and repair crew on Crusher Twelve.” She addressed the assembled workers again. “Back to work or I’ll dock your time. Come payday you’ll wish you’d minded your machines.”
The workers departed slowly, some of them swearing. Most were too beaten down to make a complaint. Heads slumped, they returned to their stations to wait the reactivation of the machines.
Joao stayed where he was. “I said, get back to your station,” the supervisor said.
He closed Davet’s eyes. “He was a bitter old man, but he was my friend.”
“Be friends on your own time.” She tapped her reader. “I just docked you thirty minutes. Go now, or it will be a full hour.”
Joao climbed to his feet and returned to his workstation. It was just like the one that had crushed the life out of Davet and took the legs off the crying man outside. He thought of his wife waiting at home and the daughter inside her and picked up his hook; the machines started up again.
The shift-change bell rang five hours later. Aching and sore, Joao headed to the exit. The supervisor stopped him.
“They want to see you in the office,” she said.
Panic cleared the fatigue from Joao’s body. “I’m sorry for leaving my station. It won’t happen again.”
“It’s not my problem.” She raised her hand, cutting off further protest. “I don’
t know what they want, but I doubt it’s to give you a medal.”
Joao felt like his machine was squeezing his windpipe into a narrow straw. He was dizzy. It might take years to get a new job. If the company gave him a bad review, he might never work again.
Joao let the guard search him and vacuum his clothes at the office door. It was clean and well-lit inside, the heartbeat of the machines outside dimmed to a grumble like a stomach growling. A stern woman behind the desk frowned as he approached.
“I am Joao Sasaki. I was told to come here.”
The woman peered at him through her glasses, flicking her eyes upward to summon his personnel file to the lenses. “Show me your hand and give me your registration number.”
Joao went through the security routine even as his mind screamed at him to beg for mercy or club the woman to death before she could make his firing official and hand him his last chit.
The woman pointed to a cardboard box on her desk. “These are the effects of Davet Noiseux. He listed you as his sole beneficiary.”
Joao blinked. Relief warred with gratitude and disbelief in his head, but he was sure his face, which felt wooden and numb, showed none of it.
“Do you have any questions?” the woman said.
He shook his head.
“His death benefit will appear in your next paycheck. You may keep the box to carry his effects in.” She tapped the cardboard container with one painted fingernail. “That will be all, worker.”
Joao picked up the box. He was searched again on the way out and had to jog back to the gate to catch the shuttle.
“Hey, rich man,” the driver said. “You think we got all day to wait for you?”
Joao found an empty seat and opened the box. It was mostly empty. There were a handful of coins in Davet’s purse, along with his ID, and a picture of a teenage girl. The girl’s smile was wide and fresh, and someone had written on the back of the photo in English, a language Joao did not know.
Davet’s safety glasses were folded into one corner of the box, and his earplugs, real ones, rolled around the bottom. The only other thing in the box was a hand-bound book. Joao thumbed through it, trying not to leave smudges on the pale pages. About half the book was filled with handwritten English, the other half was blank. Joao put it all in his pockets and left the empty box on the seat beside him. He leaned his head back and made himself as comfortable as he could.
The Light Years Page 2