Elysium Shining

by Terri Kraemer

  “We did it,” Zoey said.

  “That’s the good news,” said Il’lyse. “We can try to make the trip home, but we’ll run out of fuel before the end, no matter what tricks I use to conserve it. We’ll run out of food and water before that.”

  “Is there anything we can do to get help?”

  “We can send a signal and hope that someone back home gets it in time. There aren’t any communication satellites between here and Natt Grans, so it will be a while before our signal gets that far. We can try it every couple of days until the next survey team comes this way, which can be a month, or it can be a couple revolutions.”

  “Let’s lie low. Let’s go to Earth and hope for the best.”

  The craft moved once the girls were strapped into the front seats. Zoey could see the sun she had grown up with toward the top of the front window, and the asteroid belt passing at the bottom until the disc of rocks slipped from view. The angle changed in the window, the sun leaving her view for a brief moment, and then the sun returned in time for a rusty sphere to appear to the left.

  “So what’s the name of that one?” said Il’lyse.

  “That would be Mars,” Zoey said. “Earth has been sending probes there when they can afford it.”

  “Probes are good and all, but what do they get out of it? Building materials?”

  “Pictures and test results on what they find. I couldn’t really tell you more than that.”

  “I’d hate to spoil their fun, but I think they should build more and colonize. Get out more, you know? Dasos and I once made a clubhouse with Tonny in the woods behind our old neighborhood. It was a shack that had collapsed before we all applied to the university, revolutions before, but it was a start. We knew at thirteen it didn’t need to be the end-all when we made it. All things considered, I’m glad we did that. I’m glad we went out.”

  They neared a sphere of blue, green, and brown. A smaller sphere, dark to Zoey from the side of the craft’s approach, appeared to the right of the Earth. She took a few minutes to wonder how many days it had been. It had been a mid-afternoon in Nevada when she had left this planet more than three months ago.

  “Do you have any preferences to where we can land?” said Il’lyse.

  “I always wanted to visit Greece or Italy, but I think the language barrier might be a bit of a thing.”

  “These names! Don’t make me drop you where we first met.”

  “Somewhere in that same continent should be fine. Make it as close to a city as you like, as long as we don’t get in trouble with the locals.”

  “Relax, our cloaking hasn’t been beat in over two centuries. No one is coming to find us.”

  “Famous last words.”

  * * *

  There was a radio station in range; there had to be. Il’lyse played with the radio’s reception settings on the stiern-boat after she had landed. Her sister was crossing her arms and pouting at her in the meantime. Outside was a desert. Il’lyse always wanted to visit one of these, so she wasn’t entirely sure what Zoi’ne was unhappy about.

  Outside it was hot, despite the position and movement of the one star in the sky telling Il’lyse that it was among the later hours of the morning. While the stiern-boat did not have stellar masts, it did have an emergency panel for charging sun energy from as close as the fourth planet in the stellar system. So that served to keep the interior of the vessel nice and cool.

  “What?” said Il’lyse.

  “You know what. I would have loved to go outside during the day.”

  “You’ll be fine. Go naked if you have to.”

  “We’re naked enough with these things on. How did you Hulda’fi stand to wear them so often?”

  “It made us feel exposed, and yet powerful; protected from the elements, but not from one another. Come to think of it, maybe we need some new clothes. This could get awkward fast if we spend too many days in these suits.”

  “We have no local currency, and I’m not playing any part to a robbery. I don’t care if a lot of people on this planet deserve it.”

  “Here we go.”

  The radio found a few frequencies. Il’lyse took note of them for when she would send a message out later so that she could avoid them. With these frequencies being what they were, that was going to be simple. She picked one and found organ music. The strong hand gestures from Zoi’ne told Il’lyse that this was not a good station for her to stick with. A second one had rock music, but the static interference was too high to enjoy it. The last one of the three frequencies had a talking program on.

  It was the fourteenth of something called July, a month Il’lyse guessed, and the number given after that broke up in mere seconds of static. Zoi’ne nodded along, her eyes rolled to a corner, so she was thinking about that one piece of information. The two men talking on the radio were laughing in regards to something that had happened the day before about some moron trying to push his version of care or he would be “very angry.”

  “If only I was two years older,” said Zoi’ne. “It probably wouldn’t have mattered a whole lot.”

  “What’s that have to do with anything?” asked Il’lyse.

  For the next hour Zoi’ne explained the nightmare that was the voting system in the land where she had grown up. If it didn’t make any sense to Il’lyse, it was because that was how little it made sense to everyone else. The worlds, and their nations, of the Hoshi-Lacartan Alliance had their flaws, but not like the younger sister was explaining.

  Il’lyse sent the first message into outer space when a green truck drove across the dirt towards the stiern-boat. Zoi’ne saw it and said, “Oh no. There goes lying low.”

  “Are they the government?” Il’lyse said. This was fast for anyone to come along, she thought.

  “Sort of, yes and no. More like underappreciated employees who may or may not be over-zealous depending on whom you talk to. I’ll talk to them once I have a better look at what’s coming. Who knows? Maybe I can talk them into helping us out with a better place to park that won’t draw attention.”

  The truck had stopped. One man leaned out of his window, looking at the stiern-boat, and another got out of the opposite side of the vehicle. The man who got out wore a button-down shirt and a wide-brim hat with sunglasses. Confounded by what he was looking at, the man walked along to the portside of the stiern-boat.

  The door opened all of a sudden. Il’lyse turned and saw that her sister had done it, and the younger sister was now poking the top half of her body out of the opening.

  “Good morning, sir!” Zoi’ne said.

  “What is this, miss?” the man said with a minor twang to his accent.

  “This is a really long story. I’m sorry, was this a bad place for us to set down? We needed to park somewhere for a little while.”

  “Is that right? Well, this is a wildlife reserve that you’re on. There’s a campsite back up the road about five or six miles. Are you having some sort of engine trouble?”

  “That’s one way to put it. You can’t really move faster than light, though we do have a temperamental warp drive that lets us bypass a light-year in a few seconds once per day. We’re kind of figuring out our best move since we only have a week’s worth of food, and three weeks’ worth of energy, to travel thirty-nine light-years or less. Again, it’s a long story, but if you could keep this quiet I would much appreciate it.”

  “Hey, Roger, are you hearing any of this nonsense?”

  The other man shrugged and said a few words, but Il’lyse couldn’t hear him. Il’lyse, on the other hand, rolled her eyes in disbelief. Her sister was being honest with these men and they weren’t buying it.

  “So where did you get your costume?” said the man outside.

  “We stole it from a sex cult bent on dominating every world they come across,” Zoi’ne said. “You’re welcome, by the way. They won’t be bothering you now.”

  “Zoi’ne,” Il’lyse muttered.

  “So there’s a campsite near here? Does
it cost anything to stay there? We don’t have any Earth money right now. Shame too, I hear you have these things called carrot cakes, and I really wanted to try one or get a recipe.”

  Palm, meet face.

  “Tell you what, miss,” said the man, “if you can really make this thing fly and make it there then I’ll see what I can do about your time here.”

  “Will you? That was five miles in which direction?”

  A few moments later the stiern-boat landed again. This time it was in a lot with bare sand, a fire-pit, and a table with some cover. Il’lyse left the engine running on idle this time in case the show triggered a bad direction from the locals. The girls waited for an hour before the green truck came along and parked on the other side of the lot.

  Il’lyse answered them this time. “Hello,” she said to these humans, stepping out to greet them.

  “I have to say that was a fine feat you pulled off back there,” said the man, who Il’lyse now saw was older than she had expected. “I am a man of my word, however, and I believe you said you needed help with food for a few days?”

  “My sister said that, yes.”

  “Hello again!” Zoi’ne said behind her from inside the craft.

  “Well then,” said the man, “you are in luck. Someone left a bunch of muffins in my office this morning.”

  “I’m pretty sure that was your wife, sir,” said the younger man by the truck.

  “She keeps trying to get me to eat more often. I figure a pair of nice ladies like you could use this much more than I can. Also, if your sister is serious about the carrot cake, then I can ask my wife for a recipe for you.”

  “That is nice of you,” said Il’lyse. “Thank you.”

  “Why let two young ladies starve when it can be helped? Anyways, I don’t know how much more help I’ll be. We’ll keep this quiet, but it’s Friday so there will be other campers about, starting tonight. If you’re really from out there, then you’ll probably want to be mindful of that.” He chuckled.

  The humans left moments after one of them had given the girls the basket full of muffins. They were all as large as Il’lyse’s fist. Zoi’ne ate three of them in a hurry and hiccupped before lying on the floor of the boat. Il’lyse had one with the seeds in it.

  Both girls spent their afternoon together reminiscing about experiences that they’d had in their respective childhoods. Il’lyse had figured that Dasos had told Zoi’ne every story he could have by now, but Zoi’ne let her tell it as she remembered it. There were holes in her memory, thanks to a man, his wife, and their cult that were now gone, but Zoi’ne asked her questions that made sense and let Il’lyse lay those stories to rest when she still couldn’t answer them.

  The sun came down, mere centimeters from dusk, when Il’lyse said, “I’m sorry I fucked up your life.”

  “No,” said Zoi’ne, “my time here wasn’t all that great. I think I got what I needed out of it. I can think of no one better to come along and set that old life ablaze and force me to start anew.”

  “Dork, I meant your newer one. You seemed to be happy.”

  “I still am. We’re not home right now, but we will be. Then I’m going to spend a good, long while making this up to Tonny for running off like I did.”

  “You better. She’s been like a sister to me for a decade, as you know by now. The two of you must really love each other. That’s what surprises me.”

  “I never expected to meet someone like her, especially so soon after my new life had begun. I’m glad I chose to pursue a lasting relationship with her instead of going after more partners like Commander Consilius.”

  “Cold, infinite beyond, you did not sleep with that commander!”

  “No, we didn’t sleep. You’d be right about that. He was the first and only man I had ever been with, and, as good as it was, there was no connection there like I get from Tong-Chang. I’d gladly chase some guy across the galaxy to beat his ass for her. What? Why are you laughing?”

  Il’lyse had burst out laughing, but she did it more and more until she felt like her heart refuse to do any more work. She said, “I love it. I think I approve of the two of you. Now, Dasos and this Shungdi woman, on the other hand; I don’t know enough about her yet.”

  This time Zoi’ne laughed.

  * * *

  Night was quiet. They left the portside door open part of the way to let some air in or out while the stiern-boat’s fan system was set to low. There was a set of rolled-up mats in one back corner of the parked vessel, all of which Il’lyse promised were washed at some point recently. Zoey never asked for that, nor did she think to wonder why it mattered in the time it took to doze off on one of the mats.

  She opened her eyes to see Tong-Chang, glowing while she searched the inside of the craft. Zoey reached for her, and then she was standing, kissing the bunny-eared woman on the lips. The sensation of flesh was dim, but the wanting, the sheer force of taking in this sweet fervor, was brighter than any star. Tong-Chang pulled away. They were floating outside of Natt Grans, except the reactor in the middle was replaced by a small machine that she knew she had seen somewhere before. The machine grew larger and greater until the station twisted and vanished.

  It took Zoey seconds more to know that she was in outer space without an air source. She was alone. She had to reach Tong-Chang wherever she had gone, knowing that it was with Natt Grans. But first she needed air. Zoey inhaled and exhaled. There was no air. Her breath came sharper. Still, no air.

  With a painful gasp of air she sat up. She was back aboard the stiern-boat. After months of doubting herself, she was sure that she was awake now, however vivid the dream she’d had.

  A second mat was set out next to hers despite either one being an ample width for two people who were larger than Zoey. Her sister wasn’t there. The door was open an ample amount for someone to get out, and the suit that her sister had been wearing was hanging over the top of the pilot’s seat. Il’lyse told her that they didn’t have to take off the whole suit to use the restroom, so Zoey knew it wasn’t that, aside from the lack of her sister’s presence in that small alcove in the back the vessel.

  Zoey left the craft and saw the moon coming up from the horizon. A quarter of one side wasn’t shining like the rest of it. She had often wondered, in her youth, why the moon showed up at sunset on some days or early in the morning on some others. The lone clock she had access to could tell her the time according to the Hoshi-Lacartan standard for Elysium’s timezones, rather than where she stood, yet she could gather from the darkness and the silence coming from the next campground over, that it was well after midnight, be it one or three hours.

  She looked over by the table and found Il’lyse basking in the limited moonlight. Zoey approached and sat next to her upon the table itself rather than the bench.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” said Zoey.

  “I needed to relieve myself, and it was nice out,” said Il’lyse.

  “Using the restroom wouldn’t have bothered me.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “What do you—? Oh. Well thank you for not waking me up with that.”

  “The funny thing about that is that I almost went out to one of the other camps, dressed down as I am, to have fun with some of the people here. When I realized that the next camp over was full of boys too young for either of us I decided against it. Now I wonder if any of them was watching me. The thought hadn’t occurred to me at the time, but now it’s kind of awkward.”

  “I’m glad you decided not to go after those boys.”

  “So am I.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Months ago I might have if the Lord and Lady wanted it. It’s one thing they never asked of me, but I know of others who did. Months ago it would have led to some of those boys changing against their will, but being convinced they did want it, most of them joining our cult, and possibly one or two of them dying along the way. I know this, I know it is wrong, but I still feel as though I betrayed a family of over a thousand, as empty as they
were; as empty as I was outside of my anger and lust.”

  Zoey placed a hand on her shoulder. “Now you’re free. You’re able to be your own self again, even if it will take time to recover. When we get home you’ll have the whole lot of us – your loving family.”

  “Yes, I like that optimism. I’ll have a father who tells wonderful stories over a meal that he’s made, a badass mother who tries too damn hard for her own good but is loving in ways I wish I had accepted sooner, a brother who has fun and games even as he looks deep into things he really shouldn’t, and a little sister who studies history and talks in her sleep.”