The Girl Who Wasn't There

by G Scott Huggins

“So, while I’m looking for workarounds here to see why I keep getting strange malfunctions in the Secutors,” she said, “I’m sending you out to do the brute-force work. The Secutors need some maintenance anyway. I have a detailed list of them. I’ve contracted with your father to produce the necessary replacement parts, and you can go out and do the inspections and replacements for me.”

  A moan escaped Paul’s lips. Jael felt bad for him. Their mother’s mission would take hours of deadly-dull routine, interspersed by only slightly less-dull traipsing through corridors. But he said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, you don’t want to be late for school,” said their mother. “If you need to go, you’d better get ready. I don’t think you’ve showered yet.”

  She turned back to her work, already absorbed in it as her children retreated toward the bathroom.

  Chapter 4

  Being Schooled

  Jael broke the silence as they turned down the final corridor to Mr. Hybels’s classroom. “She never believes me,” she said.

  Paul rolled his eyes. “That’s because you two are too much alike.”

  Jael turned toward him. At the speed she was going, bouncing along the hall, she nearly stumbled. “Too much alike? We never agree on anything.”

  “Yes, and that’s why,” Paul said. “Look, I’ve said this to Mom, and I’m saying it to you now. Watching you two talk to each other is like watching some old movie of Dad’s set back in the Wild West in America. Every time you’re in the same room, you two look at each other like you’re about to draw guns and fire. You’re both determined not to lose, so you fight all the time. I wish you’d stop it.”

  “She’s the one who never believes me.”

  “Yes, because every time you talk to her, you practically dare her to disbelieve you,” said Paul. “You don’t know what it’s like to walk around in a security uniform, Jael. You know, I’ve never arrested anyone. I’ve never even suggested anyone be arrested. And yet whenever I’m on duty, it’s like people have this need to prove to me that they haven’t done anything. And it’s a lot worse with the Momstable because she has real power. Any time she talks to someone, it’s a confrontation, and she’s trained to keep control. You keep challenging her control.”

  Jael snorted angrily. “Wonderful. She has to ‘control’ her own daughter.”

  Paul sighed. “I’m saying that’s how she has to think. Just like you have to be calm when you’re dispatching. You’re angry at her, and that anger tells her you’re afraid that she’s going to find out what you’re hiding. That means you must be hiding something. She does love you, but she doesn’t know how to talk to you.”

  “Well, she should figure it out.” Jael stopped, as abruptly as she could, right outside the classroom door. “Thanks for telling her I had to be here,” she muttered, not looking at Paul.

  “What are brothers for?” he said.

  “I’ve wondered,” said Jael.

  Paul forced a grin at the old joke. He knew that Jael hated being at odds with their mother and knew that their mother hated it even more than Jael. Paul didn’t like playing the peacekeeper, either, but right now it was what was needed. For the dozenth time, Paul thought their mother had been wrong to exclude Jael from the Thunderhead security team. If Jael knew more about what it was like, she might understand where Mom was coming from. And Mom might understand that Jael’s physical disability just wasn’t the issue it had been on Earth.

  Paul and Jael entered the classroom and saw that it was already almost full. All eyes turned toward them, then swung away, returning to some ongoing tense discussion.

  “What’s up, Jeremy?” he asked, sliding into the circle of classmates. “Disappointed we showed up?”

  “Were you too busy sniffin’ around people’s private business to hear?” asked Jeremy, a malicious grin spreading over his broad features. “Do I know something Deputy Boy doesn’t?”

  Paul just waited. Jeremy Miller liked to tease Paul about being his mother’s deputy. It was tiresome but usually good-natured. This time, Paul suspected, there was more to it. Maybe the Millers had fallen afoul of Mother again.

  “Well, I won’t know until you tell me, will I?” Paul said. There was obviously something in the air.

  “It’s about the transport that landed on Pad Two just a couple of hours ago,” said Jeremy, obviously enjoying being the center of attention. “From Earth.”

  “It wasn’t our fault!” Jael said, irritably.

  Oops. On the other hand, maybe Mom has a point. Paul winced. He loved his sister, but sometimes wished she would learn that not everything was about her or what she had done. And that she could shut up once in a while.

  “How in Tycho could it be your fault?” asked Jeremy, puzzled. “I’m talking about the new colonists. Families.”

  “Oh!” said Paul, suddenly excited in spite of himself. “We getting anyone?” Now the charged air in the room was understandable.

  “That is what is rumor,” said Kseniya, her faint Russian accent gave away her own excitement. Her eyes, black as her skin, flashed. “Only we do not know from where.”

  “You’re hoping it’s from the Motherland, ochi chyorniye?” asked Yilong. The Chinese boy grinned. “Your English will get even worse.” His own was flawless.

  “I do not care,” Kseniya said, easily. “So long as whoever it is looks prettier than you. Which won’t be hard.” There were chuckles of appreciation, Yilong’s among them.

  New faces were rare in any Moon colony, and new classmates valued. This looked to be a major event. Paul looked for Mr. H, but he had not yet arrived, so there was no way to see whether their teacher’s expression would offer a clue to the truthfulness of the rumor.

  Bouncing steps echoed in from the corridor. “Wha-ho!” All eyes turned to the door. A tall young man bounced in, clearly unused to the gravity.

  “Hey, they is a school in this funhouse!” His accent was strange; Paul couldn’t place it. And his outsuit was an eyewatering collage of salmon pink and navy blue. But even more than that, what drew their stares was his hair: the left half was purple, and the right was midnight black. “Look at this!” he shouted. He jumped so high that he had to fling up his hands to keep his head from bouncing off the ceiling. “How you guys not knock yourselves out getting up outta you chairs?”

  “You get used to it,” said Paul, rising and extending his hand. No point in being rude, even to a bouncer fresh from Earth. Hadn’t they all started as bouncers? “Paul Wardhey. Welcome to Thunderhead and the Moon.”

  The new boy stared at Paul’s hand, laughed, and then took it with exaggerated care. “How do you do?” he said, in mock formality.

  Paul forced a smile. What was with this guy? “And you are..?”

  The kid laughed as if that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. “And I am…Denariis.”

  “Where you from, Denaris?” asked Jeremy.

  “‘Where yuh from?’” Denariis mimicked. “Uh, that’s Denariis,” he said. “I am from the city of Chicago, Earthside, and it is a pleasure to be here. Naw, my son, I’m just playing with you,” he said, noticing Jeremy’s face turning red. “We cool.”

  “What’s Chicago like?” asked Yilong.

  “Big,” said Denariis. “But it’s alive, you know what I mean? Like I got up here, and I was wondering where all you people were?” His voice went high on this last point, and the class laughed. “See, in Chicago, there are people everywhere, and where there isn’t people, they’s dogs, and cats, and trees, and flowers. Don’t you have any of that up here?”

  “The life support can’t handle any large animals. There’s just lab rats,” said Jael. She sounded envious. “Did you really have dogs?”

  “Nah, I lived in an apartment pod,” said Denariis. “But lotsa my friends had cats, and the whole city is full of ‘em. And streets full of cars and trains, just everywhere. Buildings up to the sky, and the sky full of airplanes and laserockets.”

  Mr. Hybels walked in and sat
at his desk, his deeply lined face lost in thought. He waved absently to the class. No one knew his exact age, but Mr. H had retired to the Moon for his health. The low gravity eased the strain on the circulatory systems of the elderly. His snow-white hair formed a halo around his head, and he wore ancient glasses, the likes of which hardly anyone used anymore. Rumor put his age at over a hundred. He consulted his convirscer. Denariis watched him with a measuring look.

  “Did you ride a laserocket up here?” asked Jeremy, who seemed to have forgiven Denariis’ earlier mockery.

  “Sure. Didn’t you all?”

  “When I was too young to remember,” said Kseniya.

  Denariis’s eyes grew wide, and he looked Kseniya up and down. “You’ve been locked away on the cold Moon all your life? Girl, that is a crime against humanity!”

  Kseniya seemed taken aback by the compliment. “Is not unusual among my people; we were some of first settlers here.”

  “Your people?” said Denariis, clearly interested. “I thought just looking at you that you were a sister from Chicago or New York or something. But that ain’t how Americans talk. Where you from?”

  “My family is from Russia,” Kseniya said.

  Denariis goggled. “Since when are Russians black?”

  Uh-oh, thought Paul.

  Kseniya’s lips compressed. “Since my grandparents immigrated from Nigeria and then were ‘encouraged’ to settle on Lunar surface. The Czar was very generous to us.”

  Paul winced at the sarcasm. Denariis was clearly lost. A lot of Americans think that no one else ever had problems with racism. Kseniya didn’t like being reminded of the terms of her grandparents’ “pioneering” resettlement. But then, so few Americans were any single race anymore, that “American” had become a race almost all its own.

  “Nigeria,” said Denariis. “You don’t say? And all up here since you was little?”

  “I remember the laserocket,” said Paul. “Both my sister and I do.” He gestured to Jael.

  Denariis looked at him with a grin. “Oh, so you guys are the next newest kids,” he said. “Where you from back home?” He looked at Paul. “And wherever it was, did they all wear uniforms all the time? You never heard of fashion?”

  Paul looked down at his outsuit uniform. “Just my work clothes.” He was about to tell Denariis that he’d probably get used to wearing a plain outsuit on his duty days, as well, when Jeremy cut in:

  “Just your junior deputy clothes, you mean.”

  Denariis’s eyes went even wider, if possible. “Deputy? Waitaminute.” He looked at Jeremy. “You’re telling me this boy is a po?” Seeing their uncomprehending stares, he said, “Po-lice? He a po-boy?” There were a couple of giggles.

  Jeremy grinned, enjoying making Paul the center of attention. “His mom’s head of security for this whole city.”

  “Oh, my Gaaahhhd!” exclaimed Denariis. “Back home, they don’t have police in school. And here the students are the po? That’s funny.”

  “All right, let’s settle down.”

  To Paul’s relief, Mr. H was starting class. The old man moved as he always did, with an easy, yet jerky slowness, caused by having to rely on the thin exoskeleton that he needed even in the Moon’s light gravity. He gestured to the wall, which came alive with a graph Paul recognized as showing demographic changes on Earth in the last decades of the 21st century.

  “If you recall our discussion from yesterday…” Mr. Hybels began.

  “So what, has he ever arrested any of you?” said Denariis.

  Paul stared at him. So did the rest of the class. What is he doing? Interrupting a teacher?

  “What, he arrest all of you?” Denariis grinned.

  “Mr. Biggis,” said Mr. Hybels.

  “Um, no,” said Denariis, as though he were the adult correcting a child. “That’s not BIH-ggiss. It’s pronounced ‘BYE-ggeez.”

  Mr. Hybels looked nonplussed. “As you wish. I happened to be speaking. Take your seat.”

  Denariis ignored this. He leaned over to Jeremy. “This boy try to arrest you, didn’t he?”

  “Shut up, bouncer,” whispered Jeremy, between his teeth.

  Denariis let out a long whistle. “He got you scared? I had you figured for a hard case.”

  “Mr. Biggis,” said Mr. Hybels, in a sharper tone than Paul had ever heard him use. “Class has begun. Take your seat and close your mouth.”

  Denariis finally turned to the teacher. “I’m not doing nothing while you disrespect me by mispronouncing my name like that,” he said, plainly irritated.

  “Mr. Biggis,” said Mr. Hybels. “You have been disrespecting me for the last minute and a half. You will stop and sit down. Now.”

  Denariis looked the teacher full in the face. “Oh? And what you gonna do?”

  Paul’s mouth dropped open. So did half the mouths in the class.

  Mr. H just folded his arms. “Well, I have a number of options. The easiest for me, and the one that would hurt you the most is this: I can leave this classroom, and not return.”

  Denariis’ grin threatened to remove the top of his head. “That all? That’s what you gonna do?”

  “Shut up, durak!” snapped Kseniya, giving him a poisonous glare.

  “Naw, that’s okay, girl,” said Denariis, looking as though he had just arrived in heaven. “Go ahead, sir. Right this way,” he gestured elaborately at the door. “Step this way, and we can all go back to our conversation you so rudely interrupted.”

  Paul couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Can he really be this much of an idiot?

  “But, I think the best thing to do is to make this scenario the opening of today’s lesson.” Mr. Hybels turned his attention to the seated students. “You appear to have a problem. May I have a volunteer to solve it?”

  Half the hands in the class shot up.

  Paul kept his down. He was obviously the target of Denariis’s attention, but he was utterly unsurprised to see Jael’s hand raised.

  “Ms. Wardhey,” said Mr. Hybels, “As I hoped.”

  Jael rose.

  “Please state the problem,” Mr. Hybels said, just as he might have during any other lesson.

  “You’re going to leave if the interruption isn’t stopped.”

  “Correct. I suggest you remove him from the room.”

  Jael’s lips tightened, and she nodded. In two crutching strides, she was in front of Denariis, who was staring in scorn and disbelief. “Is this a joke?”

  “You’re being very rude,” Jael said. “Will you please get out?”

  Denariis looked at her and laughed. “This? This is going to throw me out? Why you want to throw me out? For some stupid teacher? I was just having fun.”

  “Maybe you were,” Jael said. “But your fun is about to cost us this entire class. Now, get out: we have things to do.” She reached for his arm, but he shook her off, angrily.

  “Oh, you are not touching me! You do, and I will break your other leg, or whatever’s broke down there.” He balled his left hand into a fist, casually. “Who do you think you are?”

  Jael didn’t bother to conceal her contempt. “A student. And this is our school. Come back when you know enough to be here.”

  When Denariis swung, Paul hoped that Jael would remember her training, but she hardly had to against a bouncer like Denariis. She swayed back from his blow. Denariis pitched forward, pulled off balance by the force of his own blow. Jael reversed her right crutch and swayed back, punching down to connect behind Denariis’s ear, driving his face into the floor.

  “Oww!” he roared, and bounced up, screaming words that Paul had never heard anyone use in person. He shot upward, face a mask of pain and rage, and hung for an instant in the air, helpless and off-balance.

  Jael looked at Denariis and seemed to come to a decision. She jumped up between her crutches and kicked out with both feet. But her aim was off, and instead of slamming them into the Earth boy’s chest, she struck high up on his shoulder. A sharp crack resounded thro
ugh the classroom, and Denariis sailed backward and bounced off the wall with a high, piercing cry of pain. From the sound of it, Jael had broken his collarbone.

  Jael used the momentum to backflip completely around and land on her feet in a perfect pirouette, her crutches outstretched. Her classmates applauded politely, and she bowed from the neck in acknowledgment. Paul rolled his eyes and hoped that her success wouldn’t inflate her ego enough to make her try that trick on sensei again. He’d put her through the mat. Again. But Denariis hadn’t even seen it coming, and now he was twitching and sobbing on the floor.

  With slow but steady steps, Mr. Hybels strode over to Denariis. He picked the Earth boy off the floor with both hands, eliciting a fresh cry of pain.

  “Get off me! Get off me! You can’t touch me!” Denariis struggled feebly but was held firm, both by his own inability to comprehend the pain and by Mr. Hybels’s exoskeleton-reinforced grip.

  “Calm down, you big baby,” said Mr. Hybels. “I’m making sure you’re all right.” He held Denariis firmly by his right arm and chest. He moved the boy’s shoulder minutely, and Denariis thrashed and screamed. “Stop it! That hurts! You can’t touch MEEEEE!” Denariis looked like he would shake himself apart. He would certainly have fallen without Mr. Hybels holding him up.

  Mr. Hybels lifted him into the air. “I’m sure it does hurt with you moving a cracked bone around like that. You came into my business and disrupted it, and then you threatened another paying student. Your teachers in Earth’s public schools may not have been able to touch you, but I most certainly can. And will. Now get your crybabyish self to an infirmary.” He walked with Denariis, still crying and now cursing, and set him gently outside the door.

  “Since you refused to be a student, you have been the lesson. You may return for further lessons when you have written a letter of apology demonstrating that you have learned how to behave.” He closed the door on the screaming, cursing boy. The muffled shouts eventually faded down the corridor.

  Mr. Hybels turned back to the class. “Where did he come from? He wasn’t a visiting relative or something, was he?”