by R L Dean
Mat refocused on the list she sent. It looked like the Sadie was falling apart. And it was, just in places he couldn't readily see. It was probably going to come down to a new canister or the list.
The Sadie vibrated a little as Yuri fired the maneuvering thrusters and a proximity alarm sounded. Someone shut it down. A thunk echoed through the hull as the feet of the struts connected with the concrete and ceramic landing pad.
As he unbuckled and stood he told Yuri, "Contact the plant and see when they can get us in queue to drop the cans." Mat was going to walk Misaki to the tram. In his mind that was the important reason for leaving the ship. His secondary reason was to visit the Apex rep's office and file the report he hadn't been able to on Butte and discuss leasing a new canister.
"Alright, kep. It will be a while."
Misaki and Haydon climbed out of their seats and as the engineer grabbed her duffel and turned to leave Haydon wordlessly extended his hand out to her, a smile on his smooth face. She looked at him for a moment, then took his hand and nodded her head slightly and then parted.
Yuri cut his eyes at her, frowned and turned back to his screen. Misaki ignored him, or flat out didn't notice. Mat wasn't quite sure, but he didn't think they liked each other very much. It's not that they argued— he couldn't imagine Misaki arguing with anyone about anything, she didn't speak enough for that matter— but it was more they had a silent agreement to avoid on another.
Mat walked with her through the ship's starboard side airlock vestibule to the Landing Zone's tram tube in silence. When they reached the tram airlock and the cycle started Mat begin to feel nervous. Harmony wasn't some out-system ore depot, Earth was within sight and the security here was the kind that Mat thought of as real troopers. Not the halfhearted weenies on Butte.
There was a line at the security desk, and at least five UNSEC soldiers in heavy assault gear. Haydon would have felt right at home. If Misaki was nervous she didn't show it and when it came her turn she put her eyes to the retinal scanner without hesitation. She passed with a nod from the security guy. Mat let out his breath silently and took his turn.
They stood on the tube's platform waiting for the tram with a dozen other people. The familiar scents of lubricants and metal that the air filtration system couldn't completely wash out came down the tube from the dome. Home. Mat felt his heart skip a beat. There were a lot of memories here. While he was in Maintenance he walked across this very spot countless times.
The moment began to fade, somehow the tube felt ... smaller than he remembered.
When the tram arrived they shuffled on board with the others and found a seat. Misaki turned her head to the window and watched the featureless tube walls pass by. Mat thought she was being too quiet, even for her.
It took less than ten minutes for the tram to glide into the dome on its magnetic rail. When it came to a stop and the doors opened, they waited their turn and then stepped out onto the platform. It was mostly as Mat remembered, which was a surprise. Things in the dome changed a lot. The soft golden glow of the dome overhead, the Asian cuisine food court directly across from the platform— the inside of a concrete, steel, and ceramic mall or airport— yes, as he remembered it. But it had gotten smaller with the passing years.
The tram station that connected Harmony with Osaka dome, fifty kilometers away to the north, was a five minute walk. It was a walk that Mat didn't want to make, because that's where he would leave Misaki. He was going to have to suck it up, like a big boy. This was happening. No matter what he wanted.
Misaki hefted her duffel over her shoulder and turned to him. She gave him her trademark smile and said, "Take me to your church."
His eyebrows raised in question. This was a surprise. Misaki slipped her arm in his and moved her hand into his coverall's pocket to grip his fingers. "I want to see it. Then you can walk me to the tram."
Misaki had a way of playing with his heart that she was oblivious to. The feel of her palm on his electrified him. It made him laugh. "Sure," he told her.
They took a moving walkway out of the Landing Zone tram station. Harmony was like London or New York, a city that never slept. The plants ran round-the-clock shifts and while the dome time was set to UTC night and day were abstract concepts. People were out ... and so was UNSEC. They passed several soldiers with stun batons and rifles on street corners. More than the norm, Mat thought. Things with the union must be heating up. For a moment he wondered where it was all headed. The UN owned the domes, but for all practical purposes the mining consortiums ran them.
There were the expected changes in the time he had been gone— old businesses with new signs and names, new street vendors hawking their wares from carts. The old memories merged with the new sights ... the changes, and it seemed a little strange. Suddenly he realized something. Walking with Misaki, taking in the sights and sounds, seemed real, natural. He could see them walking hand in hand in the park. Unconsciously he squeezed her hand and smiled.
The church occupied the lower level of a permafab residential building with a steel frame and spray on laminate plastic for walls. It was small, the occupancy limit was thirty. A bronze colored cross with a little plaque that read Bethel Baptist was screwed onto the metal door. Mat silently thanked the Lord that it was still there. His aunt's old apartment was three blocks away, rented out to the ever changing flow of new tenants arriving at the dome for work, and he no longer thought of it as the place of his youth. Even the tiny room that his aunt let him call his own was faded in his mind's eye. But the church, it still stood firm. This place was as much a part of his growing years as the apartment.
"Well, this is it," Mat said, and then realized that Misaki had bowed her head. She was still holding his hand, but her almond shaped eyes were closed. Praying. Maybe that's something I should do. The strange dreams of the pilot he shot on the tug no longer came to him ... well, not as often. Somewhere deep down he began to realize it had been in defense of his crew. The pirates would have taken their ore and killed them. And the freighter, more pirates that would have stolen from them and murdered his friends ... his family. Misaki among them. He had watched the recording of the freighter's destruction before Misaki cleared all the logs— making it so they never saw it hiding in the Belt— but he had no dreams about it. Haydon had been wrong, his conscience felt free. Guiltless. Yet a part of him, that choirboy, wanted to ask for forgiveness. And so he did. He bowed his head with Misaki and silently laid out all the reasons why he did what he did and then asked God, "Make in me a right heart." Somehow this was necessary to have peace with God. That choirboy in the distant past knew this. If he didn't do this, then in the quiet hours— without Misaki and pirates— it would come back to haunt him.
When he took a deep breath and lifted his head he found Misaki silently looking at the church.
"Thank you for taking me here," she said quietly. "There's something I wanted to tell you." He waited while she seemed to collect her thoughts. "The Pendletons," she began, taking a breath that made the fine bones of her neck become more defined for that moment. "I ... I gave them the code to unlock the ship's computers ... the crew of the tug. I gave it to them. So they could release the canisters."
When she saw his brow furrow she took another breath and continued. "The Pendletons died, refusing to give them the code ... to give in. And I gave it to them, so they wouldn't kill me. And ... and that makes me weak, a coward."
Mat stared at her, wondering what the right response was. He had nothing but compassion for her, but how to express it he didn't know.
"I'm confessing, but I'm not asking for absolution. I just ... I just wanted you to know who I really am."
She started to release his hand, but he refused to let go. "I know who you really are."
On the edge of a second Mat saw her stoic expression slip, then she nodded and they turned to leave. A sakura tree bloomed in a planter in the center of the sidewalk, and still hand in hand, they walked over its pink blossoms.
At
the end of the block they took another moving walkway. A group of men in dirty coveralls and orange hardhats hopped on at the next intersection. Plant workers ... CentiCore by their logos. It must be shift change. Mat never worked for that particular plant but he knew how they felt. All work was burdensome when there was no rest and done on slave wages.
They hopped two more walkways and then walked the remaining block to the station. It was shift change. The platform was crowded with men and women in dirty coveralls and wearing hardhats. The entrance to the station was through a wide arch under a ten story office building— the headquarters for Deutsche Financial Group. And their logo was still emblazoned on the side of the building. Misaki stopped there.
"Mat, I'm not getting away from you. I'm just getting away ... I want to see my mother. I need time to ..."
Heal.
The kind of healing that would take time. A lot of it, perhaps more than a lifetime. He understood. This was what was best for her, and he did want what was best for her.
"Attention," a disembodied female voice said throughout the station. "Your attention please. We are experiencing maintenance delays affecting the northern region. Routes include Osaka, Kamokuna, New Ulm, and Archimedes ..."
The announcement repeated. Mat heard the familiar sound of a hardhat being slammed down on the concrete platform. A time honored tradition among the plant workers when there were delays of any kind.
"Looks like you'll be here a while," he said. "It'll be hours before the plant has us in queue to drop the canisters, I can wait with you."
"Good," she said, then blinked and shook her head. "No."
This was the second time he said goodbye to her, and she made them short both times. He nodded and said, "Good luck. Maybe I'll see ... good luck."
Turning he walked away. It was all he could do not to turn and look back.
30 - Misaki
"Good luck. Maybe I'll see ... good luck."
Mat turned and walked away.
Misaki watched him disappear behind a group of passersby, then reappear and step onto a moving walkway. The way he carried himself, the slumped shoulders, hands in pockets, and his head angled down a little, was a reflection of the evanescence of his voice— Good luck. Maybe I'll see you— disappointment, sadness, longing, gentleness. All the things that defined him. Mat was a complex and vulnerable man. He was making it a point not to look back at her, and a part of her appreciated the effort he was making to cut the cord that had grown between them. From the time they stood in front of the church and prayed her heart started skipping inside her chest and it was all she could do to maintain control. If she broke now she had no idea what she would do ... run away in terror, chase after him and confess all her sins.
I know who you really are.
Her ears burned with the memory of his words.
Where was the composure that was so drilled into her by her mother? Breathe, Saki, breathe. You have a reason to live. She needed it more than ever now. Holding her breath she counted to three, and then let it out slowly. All the while her eyes followed Mat. The walkway took him around a corner and he was gone, yet Misaki waited and watched for a full five minutes to be sure he wouldn't suddenly turn and come back. Then she walked into the crowd of ore plant workers on the platform, Peterson's coveralls making her simply another one of them waiting for the tram.
She picked her way through the tired and frustrated workers. Delays on the trams were common, but knowledge did not always sooth tempers and the longer they were forced to wait the angrier they would become. But as long as she didn't jostle anyone too much they wouldn't pay her any mind. A row of gunmetal gray lockers stretched against the back wall, the kind that you could rent by the day to store things, rather than lugging them back and forth through the tram stations. In Osaka dome her mother had used one to store an extra pair of boots and gloves, because the plant she worked at was on the opposite end of the dome from their apartment.
Misaki made her way to the lockers. Her focus was returning, and when she found locker 52A she didn't check behind her to see if Mat had returned to look for her, and didn't glance around, she simply entered the code to open it. From it she pulled a duffel. It was green and similar to the one she carried now— the one Mat had given her aboard the Sadie when she told him she was leaving at Butte. She pulled that one off her shoulder and threw it in the locker and closed the door. The lock beeped and flashed and she turned, walking down the row of lockers to the women's restroom.
It was crowded, and two women— one with her hardhat still on— chose to use the floor under the sink as a bed. Growing up, Misaki's mother witnessed her own mother working the backbreaking plant shifts, doing everything from organizing the tool room to welding to cleaning the floors of rocks that spilled from the refinery belts. Her mother had no choice but to follow in grandmother's steps, but she wanted something different for her daughter— she wanted Misaki to avoid this. The work-study program on Mars was a miracle, an answer to her prayers that might not happen again. So her mother pushed her in to it. And while she missed home, her early college years on Mars were good. Then one day she realized that her mother wasn't well. From her dorm room she stared out across the commlink at a woman that had suddenly grown haggard and sickly. The distance between Mars and the Moon made live communications impractical, so all she could do was look at the image of her mother while she asked how Misaki was doing, how her grades were, had she meet anyone interesting ... ?
It had confused her. Why was her mother sick? And then she realized. It wasn't sudden. All she had to do was review the comm messages over the last year and she could see it. The skin of her face turning sallow, the dark spots under her eyes growing. Her speech slowing down as it became more difficult to breathe. It was the plant work taking its toll. The very reason why Misaki was sent to Mars.
Misaki tried to return home then. It would take saving the student stipend she was given to live on for a few months, but she could do it— but her mother told her no, there was nothing home to come back to. The plant laid her off and gave her a penitence of medical benefits; it paid the rent on the apartment and dome welfare paid for food. She did not want Misaki coming back to the same fate as she— the fate she pushed her away to avoid.
She was glad when the funding for the work-study program ran out. Her mother's sickness, and a growing fear of an idealistic, but volatile man she met in her third year, Eric Prator, made returning home destiny. And when she did return her mother yelled at her until she had an asthma attack. Why had she returned here? Then she begged the Pendletons to take Misaki on as an engineer aboard their mining ship. Her years of formal education combined with natural talent made it worth their while. So Misaki went with them and sent her pay to her mother's account each month. Still, it was not enough to help with more than breathing treatments and steroids to slow the deterioration of her lungs.
Misaki stood for ten minutes in the restroom, waiting, pressed up against the wall out of the flow of foot traffic. When her turn came she entered a stall and sat down on the toilet with the duffel in her lap and opened it. Inside was everything she expected. A hardhat with an Apex mining logo, a white lab coat, small box of contacts, and a security badge with an ID that would match the retinal scan the contacts would give her. She slipped the coat on and clipped the badge to the pocket, then put the contacts in. It took them a few moments to flatten seamlessly against her eye. She was told they would fool any scanner outside of the UN Complex and Earth based military installations. Well, she was about to find out. Putting the hardhat on she stuffed the empty duffel down the disposal shoot on the wall, then opened the door to the stall and stepped out. No one gave her a second glance.
Back on the tram platform, she was again just one of the crowd. The lab coat, gray coveralls, and hardhat said she belonged.
The last time she was in Harmony was more than a decade ago— a trip with her friends from school. She remembered being disappointed. It was simply a larger version of Osaka
dome. Pulling the handcomm from her pocket she accessed the dome's network and brought up a map. Her destination was in the southeast corner of the dome.
For a moment she thought of taking the same walkway Mat had taken, he should be halfway to the business district by now— if he kept to his original intentions he would be going to the Apex rep's office to discuss a new canister— but she decided against it. Instead she took a walkway heading east, in the opposite direction. She couldn't risk running into him, not now. If she did ... she had no idea what she would do.
The walkway took her to a strip mall where the eateries were packed with plant workers. From there she walked two blocks along a residential street of recently painted permafab apartments. Another ten minutes found her at the Landing Zone tram station. She needed to be south of it.
In the end it took her another thirty minutes of navigating walkways and streets to reach the entrance to the Apex Mining ore processing plant tunnel.
The tunnel was a wide concrete and steel tube with a street down its center that ran underground and connected to the plant, five kilometers south of the dome. Misaki stood on the cross street in front of the entrance, staring. A dozen meters away on the opposite sidewalk protestors were gathered, holding signs and shouting. They were clearly plant workers. UNSEC was there— in force— keeping them off the street and out of the way of traffic. She had seen them in newsfeeds over the last few weeks aboard the Sadie, but the camera hadn't quite brought out the anger on their faces, and their voices had been muted so the newscaster could talk.
Beyond the protestors, workers were riding the walkway along the side of the street and taxicarts drove by with more tired, pale faced men and women in the seats. How easily this could have been a part of her everyday life. Here she was, dressed like one of them. There was irony in that fact somewhere. And certainly an irony in the protests, consider her mother's condition. Ignoring the angry voices and shouts she walked across the street and held out her hand as a taxicart approached, it would be faster than the walkway. It stopped and she climbed into an empty seat beside a man in a designer business suit and wearing an Apex badge. The cart took off before she was belted in.