Gravity is Heartless

by Sarah Lahey

  Inside, the vessel seems twice the size, like a Tardis. The interior décor is moody and Bohemian, with little, ornate lamps fixed to the walls, dark wood floors covered in woven rugs, and carved timber cornices that frame the windows. At the far end is a galley and a mix of tawny leather sofas and chairs, with a small Tech zone—not High-Tech but a makeshift range of cobbled together equipment. Nothing new, certainly no QM. The air system is set so cold you could make ice. Quinn notes two hydro air systems. Why do some people need it so cold?

  She also notes the Aquaculture.

  “Black gold.” Planck taps a black chamber. “Worm farm.” Ze points at the floor. “Below deck, hydroponic gardens, a circadian system, lit with lasers.”

  A sweet and pleasant scent lingers in the air.

  “Tea and cake,” Planck says. “Sit down, put your feet up. How are you feeling? You look a little tired.”

  Yes, she’s a little tired, life is exhausting, it’s hard work being not unhappy. She sits in one of the tawny leather chairs, and Planck hands her a mug of herbal tea and a slice of cake.

  “Sprinkles?” ze asks, holding a spoon of dried insects over her plate, and Quinn nods.

  She bites into her cake; the center is filled with dried plums, and it is delicious—soft and moist, with a slight crunch.

  There’s a loud thump overhead; someone just jumped over the railing. Quinn freezes, glances at the ceiling and then at Planck. Ze raises an eyebrow. Heavy footsteps run along the deck. Her heart stops.

  Tig swings through the hatch, lands firmly in the galley, and points a small, metallic fan at Planck. “New impeller for the hydro; we leave in two days.”

  “Slight change of plan.” Ze nods toward Quinn, seated in the living zone.

  Tig follows zirs gaze, “What the fuck?”

  “Hello,” she says through a mouthful of crumbling cake. She was thinking of saying, “Surprise,” but now she’s glad she didn’t, because he’s definitely surprised. She’s the last person he expected to see.

  Tig is wordless. No “hello.” No “how are you?” No “great to see you.” Nothing. Immobile, he stares at her.

  She’s overwhelmed by his presence, in the flesh, standing in front of her, staring down her down. He’s the same, but somehow he’s so much more—taller, stronger, more handsome, more real, more beautiful. She doesn’t know what to say either. One night of sex has made things between them so awkward.

  Planck clears zirs throat, tilts zirs head toward Tig, encouraging him to say something. Anything.

  “What happened to you—your face, your arm?” Tig asks.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Okay, then, what the fuck are you doing here? It’s not safe.”

  She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out, she doesn’t know what to tell him. She can’t remember why she’s here.

  “Not good, you can’t stay here.” He breathes heavily, paces back and forth across the floor, hands on his hips. “It’s not safe.”

  “Yes, you said that.” Her face burns.

  “You can’t stay here. We have to find another place for you.”

  “Okay, calm down, I’m not staying.” She puts the cake down, brushes the crumbs from her lap, stands, and climbs out the hatch. She doesn’t turn or look back or even say goodbye. She’s mortified.

  As she climbs down the ladder, though, she feels the box in her pocket, the silver box of eyes. She’s tempted to throw the box overboard, but she doesn’t; she takes it out of her pocket, turns around, and ventures back inside.

  Tig sits in the chair that she just vacated, running his fingers over his short hair. She flicks open the box so he can see what she has brought, how precious it is. He might not want to see her but he needs these; they are valuable, and she brought them to him.

  “These are for you, from Flax.” She passes him the box.

  There is no response, no acknowledgment, and she didn’t expect accolades but a “thanks” would be nice. Depleted, words fail her again, she fears she’ll regret the silence later, but there it is—she retreats, back out the hatch, down the ladder, and she stumbles across the dozen boats until she reaches the stability of the wharf. She can barely breathe. She’s furious, fuming, seething with rage. If steam could come out her ears it would. The day is getting hotter and hotter. It should be getting cooler, but the heat is intense. She pulls off the rest of her climate suit, tosses it into a pile of rubbish. Stupid fucking thing never worked anyway. Better off without it. Better off without anyone, and I’m certainly better off without him. I wish I’d never met him. I hate him.

  “Wait,” Planck calls, “wait, wait, wait.” Ze bounds over the boats toward her and in one giant leap is by her side. “Didn’t come out the way he meant it.”

  “Oh, I think it was pretty clear.”

  “You don’t understand. Come back, I’ll sort it out.”

  There is no way I’m going back inside. She holds out her hand. “It was nice meeting you.”

  “You can’t go, honestly; I won’t let you.”

  Ze takes hold of her hand and instantly she relents, releasing her anger, and all her strength is sucked away and suddenly she’s exhausted. If there were a bed on the wharf, she would lie down and fall asleep. She checks the time: almost six. She must head back to Harmonia. She can deal with her arm tomorrow. Or never. It’ll probably fix itself anyway, she reasons, it just needs time. Everyone needs time. Time to forget and move on.

  Her left hand reaches out and tinkers with Planck’s genderless earring. She pulls it away, guiding it into her pocket, but it quickly escapes and continues fiddling. Again she recovers it, and again it escapes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Sorry.” She points to her afflicted appendage. “I have no control, there’s a problem with my frontal cortex. That’s why I’m here, I’ve come all this way to see someone, a neurologist.” She pauses, sniffs. “I had a list, a list of all the things I had to do: sort out my stupid arm, update my Band, access Coin, find the G12. Then these awful people found me, and Flax gave me the eyes, and I couldn’t not come; how could I not bring them? And now, now it’s after six and, well, I haven’t done anything on my list, not one thing, and I have no Coin, how am I going to get back to the station? Sorry, I’m sorry—I’m just tired. Don’t know what I’m saying. Thanks for the cake. It was really good.”

  “Fascinating. Come with me.”

  Planck directs her to a pontoon house close to the harbor entrance. A small Indocin man, with a wispy beard, wearing traditional robes, opens the door. The room behind him glows and smells of incense. Planck pushes Quinn inside, and the Indocin man closes the door. The room is dim, lit only with clusters of lanterns scattered over the floor and tables. In one corner there is a seated statue of a blue man with a wreath of water lilies at his feet, and in his lap a bowl. His right hand points down, extended toward the ground.

  “The Medicine Buddha,” the Indocin man says, and directs Quinn toward a chair. He sits facing her with his hands on his knees, looking a bit like a Buddha himself. “Do you feel your body doesn’t belong to you?” he asks.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Have you traveled outside your body?”

  “No. Have you?”

  He frowns.

  “No, never,” she confirms.

  “Have you met your doppelganger?”

  “No. But it would be fascinating, weird but—”

  “Do you have autism?”

  “No.”

  “Epilepsy?”

  “No.”

  “Dreams? Do you dream? It’s important you dream.”

  “Yes, I dream.”

  “What about routines? Are you obsessive?”

  “Yes, definitely.”

  “Okay. Let me see the arm.”

  “I didn’t say it was my arm.” Her left hand reaches towards him. It strokes his wispy beard; it gently pulls on his ear lobe.
r />   “But it is your arm, acting on visual clues, generating actions deep inside your unconscious, so deep your conscious is not aware.” He places the arm in her lap. “Anarchic Hand and Arm syndrome, affecting all your left side. Rare. Caused by a brain injury or damage to the medial frontal cortex or the corpus callosum.”

  “Okay. How do we fix it?”

  “Why fix it?”

  “Because it’s not normal; it’s creepy, and I have to work and live.”

  “Work, what work?”

  I don’t know what I do any more. “Clouds.” That’s what I want to do.

  “People still use that?”

  “The ones in the sky.”

  “There aren’t any.”

  “Maybe there will be, one day.”

  “I can help you. First you stop fighting it. It’s not a foreign thing. It’s a part of you. Come lie down here.” He gestures to a bed. “You’re tired, very tired—and angry, very angry. Let go of your anger. Relax. Relax.”

  “I am relaxed.”

  “Relax more. More. You must practice Interoception. Connect your mental self to your physical self. Find your internal body signals. Locate your heartbeat. Feel it in your head. Find it in your toes and fingertips. It takes patience, but you must relax. Practice every day. Learn to sync your body with your mind”—he taps her head—“your unconscious mind. I’m going to hypnotize you.”

  The room is warm, and bed is soft. She stretches out and closes her eyes.

  Thirty-Three

  Oh good lordt, he’s a robot. I had sex with a machine.

  QUINN WAKES IN DARKNESS. The room is still warm and the bed still soft. She lies quite still, taking in the darkness, warmth, and softness surrounding her, and she’s overcome by an unfamiliar awareness: She feels empty and calm and generally fabulous.

  Sitting up evokes a lightheadedness that only increases her fabulousness, and with this she grins; it’s good to feel this good. She can’t remember the last time she felt this good. Then she realizes she’s not alone. There’s a shadow lingering against the wall on the far side of the room, and she stiffens.

  The loitering figure steps forward, and it’s Tig. He lights a lantern beside her bed and hands her a mug of water, which she drinks. He watches her drink until she’s finished, then he takes the mug, refills it, and hands it back, indicating she should drink more. She sips it and places it down. He hands it back. “You’re dehydrated, you need to drink.”

  Frowning, she looks up at him, but the protest she’s about to emit it is immediately quashed by the sight of his eyes. The bionic glasses are gone, replaced with the beautiful hazel bionic eyes, and she can’t take her eyes off them. They sparkle in the dim light of the lantern, mesmerizing her. “Sorry, your eyes, they’re amazing, I can’t stop—”

  “Drink.”

  “What?”

  “Drink, you’re dehydrated.”

  She sips the water. “What time is it?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Eleven. I’ve slept five hours.” Geez, I was tired.

  “It’s tomorrow. You’ve slept thirty hours.”

  “Thirty hours.” There’s something seriously wrong with me. Who sleeps thirty hours?

  “You didn’t tell me about this.” He pokes at her left arm.

  “No, I didn’t.” I neglected to mention this during our “blink and you’ll miss it” relationship. She pulls her arm away.

  “Drink more,” he says.

  “Not now.” She puts the mug down.

  He picks it up, hands it to her again, and he’s insistent, sitting on the bed beside her, taking both her hands and placing them around the mug. She doesn’t care about the water. The drink is an annoying distraction. All she cares about are his eyes, his beautiful bionic eyes, staring into hers with a secret power that renders her stunned and speechless. Now he’s so close and his warm hands are around her cool hands and she feels his breath on her cheek.

  “Drink,” he says, so she does, and he’s adamant that she finish every last drop.

  Outside, it’s deathly quiet. The only sound is the swell of the ocean hitting the pontoon. The hair on her arms prickle. It’s too quiet. “What’s going on? Who won the election?”

  “Unsatisfactory outcome. We need to leave.”

  Planck enters. “Saw your light on. How you feeling, Sleeping Beauty?”

  “I’m—”

  “Great. We’re leaving, right now. Come on, up you get.”

  Quinn climbs off the bed.

  “Power?” asks Tig.

  “Spare racks and draft tubes from Tilda, and the hydro’s up and running. And there’s another crate of coconuts if we need to surge.”

  Good lordt, they’ve using coconuts as Capacitors. What year is this?

  “Cloaking?” Tig asks.

  “Intermittent, but we’ll make do. We need to move.” Planck heads for the door.

  “Wait, wait a minute, what’s going on?” Quinn demands. “Why’s it so quiet?”

  “Revolution,” Tig says. “The citizens are gathering and won’t take long. We’re leaving, and you’re coming.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Yes, you are. Unus’s not safe.”

  “I’m not in Unus. I’m in Harmonia.”

  “Well, fuck me, miss important scientist.” Planck raises an eyebrow.

  “They’re gonna storm the climate cities,” Tig says.

  Quinn can’t leave, not without Mori, not without the cactus. “I . . . I have to go back for something—someone—he’s waiting for me.”

  Tig steps back, shakes his head. “No.”

  “I’m not asking permission. I can look after myself.”

  “Fuck.” Tig stomps out, slams the door.

  Planck smiles. “Honey, we ain’t going anywhere without you. Now, we have maybe an hour. The Hyperloop’s working one way, to get people out, but you can enter through the port at Mooring. I’ll borrow an auto. We scoot around the outside of the city, come in from the north. The hyperways are empty. You jump out at the port, get your friend, and, with a little luck, we’ll be back before people start chopping each other’s heads off.”

  “You’re authorized for reentry?” Tig stands in the doorway. “The security system’s fatal. You got out, doesn’t mean you can get back in. You authorized?”

  “Fatal? Seriously?”

  “What did you expect?”

  I didn’t expect they’d murder people for cool air.

  “Anyone know you’re here?” Planck asks.

  “No. But I used the Hyperloop two days ago.”

  “Risky. Enter the port without authorization, you’ll be killed. We need another way in.”

  She needs a new plan. Plan B: The geothermal tubes. “Access through the air vents. They open onto the moat, and there’s a maintenance route around the city walls. I have the plans and the maintenance codes.”

  “No time,” Planck says. “We don’t have a drone. It’d take hours to climb the vents.”

  Quinn shakes her head. “Don’t need to climb. Activate the air system. The compressor will kick in, and the pumps will pull me up the tube. There are thermostats on the exterior walls. They’ll be highly sensitive. Heat them a few degrees, and they’ll activate the air system.”

  “We use a laser,” Tig says. “Set it to heat. How do we get out?”

  “Shut the system down, slide down the tubes.”

  “Get me killed, I’ll be really pissed off.”

  “I’m not looking for volunteers. No one asked you to come.”

  ***

  Forty minutes later, Mori’s reluctant rescue team climbs from their auto and gazes down at tens of thousands of protesters, all wearing red shirts, gathered at Mooring, the entry port to Harmonia. A ring of small fires is fed by sacrificial autos, fuel cells, old air systems—anything that burns—and the crowd launches flaming missiles at the city. A unified chant of, “Open the gate; open the gate; open the gate,” rises into the darkness. Quinn’s
resolve crumbles; they are here to liberate a cactus and an AI meerkat. Perhaps they should leave both, get straight back in the auto, and drive away.

  “Why are they wearing red?” she asks.

  “Unity: color of fire and blood. And heat—they’re hot and they’ve had enough. An air system will keep you cool at home, if you have a home and Coin and access to Tech, but a cool city—to live in a cool city—well, life would be very different.” Planck turns to her. “Is this worth it?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure.” She hesitates. “It’s not a person, it’s information. That’s what I want. That’s why we’re here.” Not the full story, but there’s no time for long explanations.

  They split up, Planck taking a northern route to the rear of the city, away from the crowd, while Tig and Quinn head for the footbridge, unfurled and shimmering, weightless, over the moat, an open invitation to the rebels. The aloofness, the streamlined whiteness and purity of the bridge, offends Quinn. Provocation is its purpose.

  Tig and Quinn make their way over the bridge, through the crowd, until they reach the exit point: a maintenance gap close to the walls. They drop over the side, release a ladder, and shimmy down to a cavity in the city walls, which leads to the giant geothermal pipes. The tubes suck cool air across the water, directly into Harmonia. Heavy carbon filters cover the openings. Quinn enters her access codes into the security system and steps back. Nothing happens. The grates remain closed. She tries again; still nothing. Tig tries. Spectacularly unsuccessful. Fuck. I’m stupid. This was never going to work. What was I thinking?

  “What now?” says Tig.

  She needs a Plan B: Hitch’s access codes. Maybe she’s completely right about him, maybe he’s not as benign as he presents, maybe he’s not keen on her and he does work for eMpower, or Niels, or Myra. Worth a try. She locates the sequence and scans in the codes. The grates open. She shakes her head; of course, he’s not what he seems.

  They move into a tube opening and wait, side by side. Tig pulls a spare laser from his belt and sums her up. He’s unsure about handing it over. “Ever shot anyone?” he asks.

  She’s about to shake her head—no, she’s never shot anyone, she’s a Pacifist, or she was a Pacifist, but now survival outweighs any anti-violence sentiments she ever had—but then she remembers those guards on the Ship, and Jane. She didn’t shoot the bird, but she killed her and ate her, every last bit. She killed Jane; she cut her head off and her blood got in her eyes. So she’s not a wimp. She’ll shoot someone if she has to. He can give her the gun. Might not be the best time to brag about violent deeds, though. It was just a bird, but . . . Fuck it.