by Samuel Best
Tulliver grabbed his jacket lapels with both hands, balling the cloth in his tight fists and pulling him closer. The man was terrified, looking around for a chance at escape like a wild, captured animal. He tried to break free, but was held in an iron grip.
Forcing the whimpering man down into the seat next to him, Tulliver stared deep into his eyes with grim seriousness. The man’s darting gaze eventually found Tulliver’s, and he was unable to look away. The gaze dug deep into his psyche, seeming to unearth the very core of his being.
Later, when he was sure no one else could hear, he admitted that the experience had made him feel like weeping.
“I can get you a red ticket,” Tulliver had said in the galley, shaking the man earnestly. “And I can get you so much more.”
Ivan had been his shadow ever since.
He only spoke a few words of English, but he understood it well enough. Fortunately for them both, Russian was one of the four languages of which Tulliver had a passing knowledge — one of the only positive side effects of being raised in one of New York’s finest all-boys authoritarian multi-national boarding houses.
Tulliver beckoned. Ivan was suddenly at his shoulder, staring at Tulliver’s face like a dog stares at a master’s while awaiting an imminent command. He had put on a few pounds since he began working for Tulliver. Though he was still wiry, his sunken, hungry face had filled out and become less pale. His bone-and-sinew limbs had fleshed out and grown some muscle. A full beard, however, eluded him.
“Run ahead to the bar,” said Tulliver, squeezing Ivan’s shoulder. “Tell them I’m coming.”
Ivan looked at him, hesitant to obey.
“It’s alright,” Tulliver assured him. “I’ll be fine. You run along.”
Reluctantly, Ivan departed, padding out of the atrium with barely a sound. At first, Tulliver thought he accomplished his stealthy movements with the aide of a special shoe. It was several days before he realized Ivan was barefoot, and his feet were so filthy they were completely black. He had refused Tulliver’s attempts to buy him a new pair.
“REMINDER,” said an artificial female voice over the ship’s intercom. “Hypergel provides increased radiation protection when traveling through the Rip. Speak to a crew member to upgrade to Red Class.”
As he left the atrium, Tulliver passed a workman kneeling next to a light fixture in the floor.
“Good day, Mr. Pruitt,” the man said with a wide smile.
“Hello, Jack.”
“I wanted to thank you again for that…item…you got for me,” said the workman as Tulliver walked past. “It’s really working great, and I—”
“Don’t mention it,” Tulliver replied, waving him off.
“If only the other guys could see—”
“Jack,” Tulliver said sharply, turning around to face the workman. “Don’t mention it.”
Jack swallowed hard, as if his mouth had suddenly gone dry. “You got it, Mr. Pruitt. No problem, okay? You have a good one.”
He turned back to his work with shaking hands.
Tulliver greeted Mick, the doorman, at the entrance to The Velvet Speakeasy after trying to enjoy a leisurely stroll along the promenade.
The bald doorman sat on a metal stool, muscular arms crossed over his barrel chest, face locked in a permanent scowl below a simian brow. Tulliver had hired him after he was put on suspension by his maintenance supervisor for brawling with a passenger.
“Anything new?” Tulliver asked outside the establishment.
“That scientist is drunk again,” said Mick, nodding his big head toward the bar. “We got two more orders for parts from the workmen.”
“Foreman won’t sign the work orders?”
Mick nodded, and Tulliver sighed. The shop foreman was becoming a major source of irritation. He had been just a minor blip on Tulliver’s periphery, but he seemed to have noticed he held some amount of control over the distribution of parts within the ship. Lately, he had decided to exercise some of that control by refusing certain work orders until his demands were met.
Tulliver could forgive someone skimming off the top. It was how he himself scraped by, for the most part. What he couldn’t forgive was someone with the responsibility of a ship’s foreman using his position for financial leverage at the expense of those he was sworn to see safely to Galena.
“I’ll handle it,” he told Mick.
“You sure?”
“I’ve been meaning to get down there anyway. What else?”
“Someone’s waiting for you by the booth.”
Tulliver looked inside. Beyond the bar and the dining tables, a workman stood in the shadows near the large booth at the very back, hands in his pockets, staring down at the floor. Ivan sat at one of the tables, drinking a soda, keeping an eye on the workman.
“What’s he want?”
“Wouldn’t say.”
Tulliver grunted thoughtfully, then patted the doorman on the shoulder.
“Thanks, Mick.”
Soft jazz music played as Tulliver passed the bar. The robot barman produced a ready-made gin and tonic and set it on the counter. Tulliver fished out his hellocard and tried to set it on the card reader, but the robot barman waved him off. The robot pointed to the floor, as if to say, It’s on the house.
Tulliver smiled graciously, pocketing his hellocard and saluting the robot.
“Thanks, Bartee.”
Their little charade played out every time he returned to the bar, a little scene he had one of the workman hardwire into the robot’s circuitry. The name was his idea, as well.
He slapped Niku Tedani on the back as he walked by. Niku turned slightly on his stool, looking out through drooping eyelids.
“Still no hypergel, doc?” asked Tulliver.
“Jus’ one more,” said Niku, drunkenly holding up his half-finished cocktail.
“Need help getting there?”
“Pfffft,” said Niku, turning back to his drink.
Tulliver barked laughter and took a sip of his gin and tonic. He made a point to savor every sip, knowing there would be no alcohol once they landed on Galena.
He nodded at Ivan but ignored the waiting workman as he sat in the capacious booth at the back of The Velvet Speakeasy — his booth, as he now thought of it.
“Is this him?” he asked Ivan.
Ivan nodded.
Finally, Tulliver deigned to look at the workman. He was no different from the others at first glance: dirty blue coveralls, grease-smeared face, hair cut short for safety reasons, and tired, overworked eyes. Yet Tulliver recognized him as being one of the few passengers with a child on board.
“Come,” he said, calling the workman over.
The man stood in front of the booth. He took his hands out of his pockets, clasped them in front of his waist, then put them back in his pockets again.
“Don’t be nervous,” said Tulliver easily. He took a sip of his drink and settled deeper into the padded booth. After a few moments of silence, he gestured calmly for the workman to proceed.
“I need a red ticket,” said the man.
Tulliver enjoyed another sip. “What’s your name?”
“Merritt.”
“Merritt what?”
The man hesitated. “Alder.”
The corner of Tulliver’s mouth twitched. “You didn’t want to tell me.” The man opened his mouth to lie, but Tulliver held up his hand to stop him. “It’s smart. But, if you’re here to do business, we need to know each other. I’m Tulliver Pruitt.”
“I know who you are.”
“Good. Then we can skip that part.”
Merritt eyed a chair near the booth, but was not invited to sit. Behind him, Ivan rhythmically tapped a bottle opener against the top of his dining room table.
“I need a red ticket,” said Merritt.
Tulliver regarded him intently for a long moment.
“You know what I do here, Mr. Alder?” he asked quietly.
Merritt shrugged. “You get things
for people.”
Tulliver shook his head. “I provide a service. That service comes at a cost.”
“I can’t afford much.”
“I don’t want your money.”
Merritt frowned, confused.
“Surely you’ve heard about my deals with some of the other farmers,” said Tulliver.
“I don’t understand.”
“Galena. You can pay me on Galena.”
“How?”
“You will harvest your crop. Some of it will go to me.”
“How much of the crop?”
“Twenty-five percent.”
Merritt’s confusion was replaced by the seeds of anger. “The government takes seventy. That’s not enough left over for me and—”
He fell silent, chewing on his next words instead of letting them slip out.
“How is Gavin doing, by the way?” asked Tulliver. “Still having a problem with the soy diet?”
“How did you know about that?” Merritt said through a clenched jaw.
“It’s a small ship, Mr. Alder. I imagine the ticket is for him, correct? How nice it would be to let him soak in one of the hypergel tanks until we arrive at Galena.”
Merritt bit back a comment, then visibly forced himself to calm down.
“I’m not a tyrant, Mr. Alder,” added Tulliver. “I would take my cut from your remaining thirty percent. That should leave plenty for you and your child. From what I’ve heard, he isn’t a voracious eater.”
Ivan chuckled.
Merritt glanced over his shoulder at him, then met Tulliver’s dead-eyed stare.
“The ticket,” he said. “How would you get one?”
Tulliver shifted in the booth and took a sip of his drink. “You can hear the answer to that question, or you can have the ticket…but you can’t have both. Our meeting is over, farmer. What’s it going to be?”
CHAPTER SIX
ONE YEAR AGO
Merritt’s worst memory was of a visit to his wife’s hospital bed — what would, in fact, turn out to be her death bed. Up until that point, he hadn’t allowed himself to believe she was dying.
The antiseptic sterility of the hospital washed over him as he stepped through the entrance, Gavin at his side, trailing a humid fog which clung to the city that morning like a thick blanket. The nurses who knew him nodded their greetings as he led his son to see his sick mother.
She had a window room, which was fortunate in every aspect save for the draw on their bank account. Merritt wanted her to have what little sunlight pierced the dense cloud cover.
Gavin walked to her bedside timidly, leaning in to allow himself to be hugged. Emily smiled as she wrapped her thin arms around him, pushing her cheek against the top of his head.
She had lost her hair two months ago, and Merritt was ashamed to discover he could barely remember what she looked like with her long brown curls.
“I got you something,” she whispered to Gavin.
He pulled away and looked at her with hesitant expectation. Emily gestured to a wrapped box on the far side of the room.
“Go and see.”
He hurried over to the box and knelt before it, looking back for permission before ripping off the wrapping paper to reveal a yellow excavator with swappable treads, doors, and bucket.
While Gavin played happily on the floor, clicking different pieces on and off his new toy, Emily took Merritt’s hand and guided him into the seat by her bed.
“Bad health report this morning,” she said softly, her voice strained.
Merritt looked away. There had been plenty of bad reports, and plenty of good ones, too. The bad ones didn’t seem to affect Emily like they used to, which is more than he could say for himself.
“I’m sorry I left,” he said.
“If you don’t work, they’ll give your job away.”
Merritt grunted. They’d been over the subject many times before. He still couldn’t find a way to balance his guilt at not being constantly at her side with the satisfaction of having a job in a nearly-jobless economy.
She patted his arm lovingly, then pressed a small leather pouch into the palm of his hand. He looked at it, frowning. The logo of a small leaf with a plus sign in its center was stamped on the front. He rolled it between his fingers, feeling small spheres within, almost like beads.
“Seeds,” whispered Emily.
She produced her faded Galena Farming Initiative from under her waist and pressed it into his palm.
“I know you don’t want to go,” she said. Merritt opened his mouth to protest but she put her finger to his lips, hushing him. “It’s alright,” she told him. “You would do it for me.” She looked at Gavin. “But now you have to do it for him.”
Emily closed her hand around Merritt’s, holding the pouch.
“There are a hundred seeds in here,” she whispered. “A hundred drops of hope. Our boy needs better food, my love. He needs better everything. You must plant these seeds on Galena.”
“Only one crop grows in that soil,” said Merritt, “and it’s poison to him.”
“But these,” she whispered, patting his hand covering the pouch, “oh, but these are special. One of them will grow.”
“Where’d you get them?”
She looked at her son, watching him with tear-filled eyes. Merritt noticed the hellocard in her other hand.
“Emily, what’s going on?”
She looked back at him, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. Holding out the hellocard to him, she said, “There’s enough on here to get the two of you to Galena.”
He refused to take it, just as he had the last few times she offered, knowing it was a fantasy she had constructed. Yet there was something different in her eyes that time — an honest belief so powerful he was compelled to accept, if only to make her feel better in the moment.
Emily died that evening, while Merritt and Gavin slept in a guest room just down the hall. The doctor came in and gently touched his shoulder, and he knew. He knew before his head left the pillow and before he walked down the hallway in a daze while the doctor droned on about how peaceful it was and how she had a little smile on her face.
The day after, Merritt left Gavin at the nearest police station’s daycare program and took the small leather pouch to one of the last print shops in the country. He had already discovered Emily had not been lying about the new funds on her hellocard. There was indeed enough money to get him and Gavin comfortably to Galena.
Gavin showed a bent old man behind the cluttered counter of the print shop the pouch’s logo: a single leaf with a small plus sign in the middle.
The man grunted as he held the pouch under the light of a large magnifier.
“Real leather,” he said, his voice low and rough. “How much for it?”
“Do you recognize the logo?” Merritt asked in return.
His own queries had revealed no answers. No one at the municipal building downtown, where Emily used to work, remembered her. She hadn’t been there in almost two years, and the employee turnover rate in the government offices was so high it was a wonder anyone learned their coworkers’ names.
The only useful piece of information Merritt walked away with after his visit was that no company in those offices used the leaf for a logo.
“Mmmmm,” said the old man thoughtfully. “I know this logo. I have made business cards.”
He flicked off the magnifier light and swiveled it away, pushing the pouch across the counter.
“Five thousand, and I tell you,” he said, staring at Merritt unapologetically.
It was the first major draw on Emily’s hellocard Merritt had been forced to make, and it would not be the last.
The old printer’s information was correct. Merritt soon found himself standing on the street in a heavy rain, looking up at a towering downtown skyscraper.
Halfway up the tower, a large green leaf glowed brightly in the gloom, the outline of a plus symbol in its center. A woman carrying an umbrella hurried past him
, scanned a badge at the door, and ducked into the building. Merritt followed her, catching the door a moment before it closed.
She eyed him suspiciously as she shook out her umbrella.
“Delivery for agriculture,” he said, showing her the leather pouch.
The woman rolled her eyes as she folded down the collar of her coat. “Agriculture, right. That’s Marty. Broom closet on six. I hope he didn’t sell you any of his magic beans.”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.”
He waited until after she took the lobby elevator, then went up to level six.
A single hallway led from the elevator, one side covered with glass windows overlooking a clean room. Several people hunched over workstations, wearing white lab coats and hair nets.
A door on Merritt’s right showcased the leaf logo and a small, stenciled plaque which read, Martin Douglas, Ag.
Inside the room, a rotund man stood with his back to Merritt, bent over a microscope, his legs like the clapper of a bell within his capacious lab coat.
“Marty?” said Merritt.
The man yelped and spun around, knocking a petri dish to the floor.
“Who are you?” he asked after he’d caught his breath, his eyes narrowing.
“Emily Alder’s husband.”
His face went slack and he swallowed thickly. “Then she’s…is she…?”
Merritt showed him the pouch. “What’s this?”
He handed it to Marty, who flattened out the logo, then gave the bag a gentle squeeze.
“Seeds,” he replied.
“What’s special about them?”
“I spliced samples of Earth crops with strains of bacteria I believe will be resistant to the soil on Galena.”
“Samples?”
Marty looked past Merritt nervously, assuring himself the door was shut. He lowered his voice and said, “Corn. Wheat. A dozen more. Emily gave me the samples, but she—she wouldn’t tell me where she got them.”
“Why?”
“So we could grow vegetables again. And so Gavin could be healthy. I deconstructed the soy germs that grow in the sample soil and applied some of the resistant strains to these seeds. Some of them will grow, if they make it to Galena.”