It didn’t hurt to be careful.
‘I just want to buy a flat.’ He edged closer.
‘I don’t care.’ She didn’t want to waste time asking. ‘I know you’re not a businessman. You’re a journalist. I don’t know why you’re here and I don’t care. I know you’re not really working for Branderson Incorporated, and I know the woman you’re living with on the Evermoon Station isn’t your wife.’
He glanced at the door, but it had re-appeared, blocking the empty corridor from view.
‘There’s no one out there anyway.’ She said. No one lived on this floor, or the three below it. ‘No one knows we’re here.’
‘You won’t shoot me.’ He told her, looking so much more confident than she felt about that.
‘If you do what I want, I won’t have to.’ She pictured Kit, waiting patiently by the estate agent office, and it gave her voice an edge. At least she was doing something. He just had to wait. They all did. Alfie wrapped up in his blankets, too old for school but unable to get a job. Tayrina, powerless to follow her employer to his shiny new world because someone else was willing to pay their own travel fare and she couldn’t afford it. She waited without knowing, but still she waited.
‘What do you want?’ Finally, the right question.
Her wants were simple. ‘I want a home like this.’
He paused with his hand above his phone.
‘I want to live in this city. I want to walk down its streets knowing their mine.’ It sounded so dreamy, and so insane. She hadn’t lived in a proper house since they’d left Gaderna, two newly-weds following the promise of work. She and Arthur.
‘I’m not sure I can help you. Unlike you, I don’t work for an estate agent. Couldn’t you just alter some numbers, get yourself whatever you want?’
She found his stupidity hilarious. But it didn’t make her laugh. ‘I don’t work for an estate agent.’
‘Ah.’ He backed off from the desk. ‘I see. I suppose that makes sense. Who do you work for?’
‘That’s none of your concern.’
‘Oh, I think it is. If we’re to go into business, I want to know who you are. And who you work for is very much a part of that. Don’t you agree?’
She hated his calmness, his clear command of words. Wasn’t she the one with the gun here? ‘We’re not going into business. You’re going to transfer the money I need onto this card.’ She flicked out the unregistered credit chip and waved it at him. ‘Then you’re going to leave and I’m not going to tell anyone who you work for and I won’t tell your wife about Jeanette Peeler.’
He looked up at the ceiling and spluttered a laugh. ‘Jeanette Peeler. Tell whoever you like about Jeanette Peeler.’
Esme faltered, the gun slipping slightly from her fingers. ‘Doesn’t matter. I know you’re not really working for Branderson Inc. I’ll tell them who you really are.’
She remembered the day they’d found a man at the architect’s office, working for a rival. She had been in the kitchen when they dragged him out into the yard. When they finished with him and left him lying in the dirt, blood mixing with the rain, she sneaked out to take him a glass of water and a biscuit. The fear in his eyes when he saw her approach still haunted her.
He disappeared from the site before she left for home. No one ever saw him again.
‘And you think they’ll listen to you.’
Esme’s phone shook against her side. Someone else demanding her attention. If the conversation had been going the way she wanted, she might not have answered it.
‘Mama.’ Taylina spoke too quickly. Her voice cracked. ‘Jake says he’s not going to school anymore. He say’s he’s got a job off-world.’
She nearly dropped the phone.
‘Put him on. Now.’
Whispering clattered in the background. She thought she heard Alfie’s voice. As she waited, so did Mr. Spencer. He sat cross-legged on the floor, watching with narrowed, curious eyes. His suit blended with the dark, un-customised carpet.
‘Mama. Don’ get angry.’ Jake sounded even angrier than Taylina. She imagined the shouting and hoped her neighbours were out. The last thing she wanted them to know was that her son was threatening to leave the planet.
However much people swore they would come back, that they would send money to their relatives still on Karmia, they never did. Everyone knew that. Going off-world was just another way of saying desertion.
‘Now you listen to me.’ She kept her voice level, though she wanted to scream. Jake was far too young to leave, too young to make that choice. ‘You get yourself to school and stop all this nonsense. They wouldn’t hire you at your age.’
‘I lied.’ He threw back. She thought she heard excitement in his voice.
‘You did what?’
‘I told ‘em I was old enough.’
And they believed him. Believed a boy of twelve was over sixteen. ‘I don’t care what you told them. You aren’t old enough. Get yourself to school.’
‘Mama, we need…’
‘Get to school. Now. I’ll go down that yard and tell them how old you are, and don’t think they’ll let you go then. If you’re not at school by the time I get home, you’ll be doing everyone’s chores for the rest of your life, boy.’ She hung up before he had a chance to argue.
Mr. Spencer raised an eyebrow. ‘Problem.’
‘No.’ Nothing that a stranger needed to know. Nothing that anyone outside the family should know. This was her business.
‘So.’ He leant forward and peered up at her from under his gelled hair. It looked dead in the artificial light. ‘You want a flat. Just for you? You want to live high up in this city and lord it over your friends.’
‘No.’ Again, she didn’t have to tell him. She jerked the gun, trying to remind him it was there. ‘I just want money. That’s all you need to know.’
His laugh shot through her heart. She couldn’t understand why he wasn’t taking this seriously. He stood up, slowly, as if the gun wasn’t there, as if he had all the time in the world. She pulled her finger away from the trigger, eager just to blast his head off.
‘They won’t believe you, you know.’ He stepped nearer and tilted his head to take in her face.
Esme clenched her teeth. ‘They will.’
Mr. Spencer turned and walked away. ‘They really won’t.’
She threw herself at him. Her fingers twisted in his plastic hair, eager to rip it right off his head. ‘I’ve seen it happen. It doesn’t matter if they believe me or not, once the suspicion is there, they’ll dig and dig until they know for sure.’
The gun pressed against his temple made no difference. His hand slammed into her stomach and pushed her off. She stumbled back. The coffee table caught her. Clutching it with both hands she dragged herself up, heart pounding, air sticking in her throat. A fist of panic gripped her heart as the breath pounded against the back of her mouth. She could not breathe. She pressed the gun against her chest, urging her lungs to work again.
‘Look.’ Mr. Spencer’s too-warm fingers closed around her arm and he pulled her up, dropping her into the desk chair. It adjusted to her height and weight. The soft cushion held her. This was all she wanted.
She hadn’t cried in seven years. She scooped away the tears with the hand that held the gun.
‘I don’t care about the money. Really. I’ll give it to you.’ He jumped up onto the desk and kicked his legs back and forth like a child, eyes alight.
Esme didn’t like the way he grinned at her, the way his eyes bored through her skull. He saw too much, expected everything to go his way. She clutched the gun and waited, wondering whether she wanted a flat in the city enough to do whatever he asked.
‘Show me where you live.’ He demanded. ‘I want to see it.’
She had the gun. So why was he the one making the demands?
‘What?’ After all their work, even with the gun still in her hand, control slipped away.
‘If you want a flat so badly you’re willing to ki
ll, I want to see why.’ He gestured to the window control. ‘Show me.’
She gulped a breath. It still hurt. ‘And you’ll give me the money, and leave, and tell no one?’
He shrugged. ‘I might.’
She thought of Jake, standing in the works queue in the hope that he could help. But she couldn’t feel angry, only disappointed. It questioned her ability to manage. There must have been loads of people in that queue. Anyone could have seen him.
‘Not getting money through?’ She heard her neighbours’ mocking.
The money had stopped years ago. First her father, then her brothers and finally Arthur had all stopped sending it. She didn’t know why and it felt wrong to ask. She didn’t want to appear like she was begging, going to someone for help when she could manage well enough alone.
Right then. She stood and walked on unsteady feet to the window. Just a picture, that was all. Nothing really. He couldn’t see very much from that. He couldn’t see her shack and the lean-to tent nailed to it. He couldn’t see each repair she had made, each time regretting that the house was no longer really Arthur’s, the way he had built it.
At first it just looked like the city. Like a glass of water had been thrown from space and landed, shattered, in the desert, and around it a jungle grew.
Mr. Spencer moved nearer and she didn’t blame him. In the shadow of the city, crowded on the edge, a tented encampment clung to civilisation, dwarfed and hidden by the grandeur right next-door. Barracks for workers had been erected when the city building-site opened, twenty years-ago, but people preferred to be near the city. It was money out of wages to get the bus shuttle to the building yards.
The building firm had taken the barracks with them when they left for the new city site on Tandoria. They were intended for the Company workers, and they had all left, followed the promise of work. Taking their wages with them.
‘Well, you’re almost in the city there.’ Mr. Spencer leant close to peer at the wavering image. Desert sand flew up to block the shacks from view. ‘Just move in.’
She levelled the gun again. ‘Just give me the money. I’ve shown you what you wanted to see.’
Mr. Spencer moved nearer, laid his hand on her wrist and made her elbow quiver. She blinked furiously.
‘Get off me.’ She tore her arm away.
He gripped her upper arms, fixed huge, blue eyes on hers. Her limbs rejected his touch, everything contracting, as if to shrink and slip away.
‘Why won’t you just tell me?’ He cupped her face in his hands, knocking the gun aside with an elbow. ‘What’s your story?’
She didn’t have a story. There was nothing to tell. The intensity in his eyes made her reach for her phone, but he snatched it from her. It cracked as it hit the wall. She heard the plastic splinter through the ringing in her ears.
They wouldn’t even know what was happening. Tayrina, probably still running around after her brother, and Kit and Alfie, ready by the city gate to take the card and get it to the estate agents office.
This man was going to kill her. She would be found in a hundred years, a skeleton in the desert.
‘Let me go.’
‘I thought you wanted money.’ He pushed her against the window frame, and for an instant she hoped it would shatter and she would fly. The street lay so far below she would probably be dead before she hit it.
‘I thought you wanted a flat. You want to better your neighbours, pretend you’re the wife of some rich businessman. Is that it? Is that what you want? I’ll give it you.’ He stared right past her. ‘Just tell me why you needed a gun.’
Esme opened her mouth to answer but no words appeared. Her mind cried out to tell her not to speak. It wasn’t his business. These things were her affair. Her children, no matter what they did, were hers.
‘I can’t.’ She wished she could. The words rose up from her heart and longed to fly, but she could not let them.
Mr. Spencer let her go and crossed to the desk, beginning to pocket his phone. He picked up his briefcase and, as he shook his head, checked the buckle. ‘Fine.’ The door vanished at his touch. ‘All I can say is you can’t want it that much.’
‘I do.’ It embarrassed her enough to admit that.
He stopped at the door. ‘So tell me.’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’
‘Why, exactly, do you need my money?’ He set his briefcase down on the threshold.
Esme paused, feeling sick. ‘I need to prove…’ She clenched her teeth. ‘The city says you can’t move in unless you prove you can support yourself. They need to see you have the money.’
She made it vague, pretended he really was her client. To him these things were merely hoops to be jumped through.
‘But you don’t.’ He considered her through narrowed eyes.
‘Of course I don’t.’ The gun still trailing from her fingers must have told him that. It made no sense to shoot a man for something she already had.
‘Why not? You can’t have got here without a job, so why don’t you just save up. That’s what most other people do.’ He didn’t add that didn’t include himself. Oh no, thought Esme, he had no idea.
‘I’m a cook in the works canteen.’
‘Not an estate agent?’ He tried to smile.
She shook her head, willing him to stop the questions. She had to answer. She needed his money.
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘I can’t save up,’ she volunteered before she could stop herself. Now she had started, she felt a rush to get it over with. Tell him everything, throw her life open for his calculating eyes to see. ‘I have five children and they need to move. I need to get them somewhere better, somewhere they can get a job that isn’t off-world.’
His head tilted slightly, his fingers jerked to the device in his pocket. ‘Off-world. Why not? There are plenty of jobs there.’ His smile looked so pleased with itself, as he imagined he had found a solution.
She closed her eyes against his naive stupidity, angry at how ignorant he thought she was of his perfect inter-galactic world. Her fingers tightened around the gun, levelled it at the wall and fired. She had to drive the fury from her pounding head.
‘Because…’ She fired again. Then threw the gun across the room. ‘Because they won’t come back.’ Pressing her hands to her head she twisted her fingers about her hair and dug her nails into her scalp. She sank to the floor and knelt there. The anger wanted to explode. ‘They’ll go and for the first few weeks, they’ll send money and letters saying how much they miss me and how they want to be home. And then it’ll all just stop. No more letters. No more money. Nothing. I won’t even know if they’re alive.’
‘Why wouldn’t they be? The universe isn’t that dangerous a place you know. Everyone else manages to stay alive.’ His voice sounded closer so she didn’t look up. If he came too near, she might kill him.
‘You could get a job off-world, you know, and take them with you.’ Like talking to a child.
She dragged her head up to look at him. ‘I can’t afford a ticket for six.’ Arthur had stood at the door, suitcase in hand, and promised to send her the tickets as soon as he could. When they hadn’t come by new year she convinced herself he was saving them for her birthday. Every year she did the same. Every time she promised herself she would write and ask, and never did. If he didn’t want to send them…
Then it hit her. Jake had said he got a job off-world. How did he think he was going to afford the ticket?
‘No one will pay for travel when so many are willing to pay for it themselves. There are probably a thousand people, back on Gaderna, ready to pay to come out here and work in the building yards. They want to build cities like this to live in.’
‘So you came out here alone, to find a better life.’ He smiled for real this time. ‘I can understand why you don’t want to risk it again.’
‘Not alone.’ If she muttered it perhaps he wouldn’t hear.
‘Well, no, with your children.
She shook her head. Even his smile didn’t make her think this was over. He had said he wanted to know everything and she knew he wouldn’t stop until he did. ‘No. I only had one then, the baby, Kit… Christopher. He’s twenty now.’ He had been so small she could have taken him as hand luggage, all wrapped up in Gaderna knitted blankets. The bright patterns faded by the time they got to Hanni.
It was the suspicion in his eyes, the way he stopped looking directly at her, that made her speak. She saw the accusation through his skull.
‘My father, two brothers and partner were with me then.’ She didn’t give them names, pretended she had forgotten them. ‘They got tickets when the building firm moved, after the city was finished. They said they’d send tickets for me and the children, when they could, but… I just need to get them into the city. There are jobs here. Proper jobs. And the best school on the planet. And a house. I just want a house with windows I can clean, and carpets. Please.’
She rushed through the words, desperate to get it over with and phone Jake. She needed to know how he had found the money. She didn’t want to think it, but the suspicions curled like cigarette smoke around her head.
She needed to get him away before someone realised. She could not face the mocking in her neighbours’ eyes.
Mr. Spencer picked up the credit chip from the desk, scanned it through his phone and put it down again. ‘There, now doesn’t it feel better, just to tell someone.’
Esme stood and thought about it for a moment. ‘No. It doesn’t.’ In fact, it felt worse. Spilling her cares for the world to see. It felt like standing in the street, naked and screaming, running around knocking on every door in a mad desire for attention.
It felt wrong.
He shrugged. ‘You got what you wanted, so what does it matter.’ He turned and stepped through the door.
Her hands shook as she reached for her phone. The cracked screen lit up, the time bouncing around on bright white. Lunchtime. Relieved, she dug her finger nail into the redial button and pressed it to her ear.
‘Mama?’ Tayrina sounded cheerful.
Kzine Issue 7 Page 2