The Settlers

by Jason Gurley

  The city swims away beneath him, bursting with activity.

  The zoo.

  He glances back at the observation deck and is startled to see a face in the window. It belongs to the hostess from a few days ago. He meets her gaze, and she lifts a hand. He offers a smile.

  She looks upward, at the blackness beyond the ring of petals.

  He follows her gaze. The ten towers, like points of a crown. The doorway to beyond that exists between them.

  The hostess smiles back, and waves once more. Then she turns from the window and is gone.

  Mae, Micah thinks.

  He fires the tiny attitude jets, turning his back to the tower.

  The sun is beginning to rise.

  He turns his face into its warmth, fires the jets, and rises with it.

  Argus City recedes.

  Micah approaches, and then passes the ring of petals.

  The sun is warm, but everything else is so cold.

  Mae.

  His closet is full of sweaters.

  There's one of almost every color, one for almost every year of a fifty-year marriage.

  Some are scratchy. Some are silky-smooth. Some don't fit so well. Some feel like home.

  Bernard's sweaters are a metaphor for his marriage.

  There hasn't been a new sweater in six years.

  He hates today.

  Today he must choose one sweater.

  He'll wear that sweater for the rest of his life.

  Angelika waits for him to come to her bedroom each morning. He tells her that she can get up and play, or pour a bowl of cereal, that she doesn't have to wait for him, but she does. He reminds himself that she has lost more than he has, and comes to her room each morning with a smile and kind eyes.

  This morning she is sitting up in bed. Clutched in her arms is a stuffed dragon with googly eyes. She calls the dragon Sir Patrick, but Bernard doesn't know why.

  Good morning, Angelika, he says.

  She doesn't say anything, but then, she hasn't spoken in months.

  He holds out his hand.

  Angelika climbs down from the bed. She is so small in her nightgown.

  She takes his hand, and they go downstairs.

  Do you remember what today is? he asks.

  Angelika sits at the enormous table and stares at Sir Patrick. She doesn't answer.

  Bernard scrambles some eggs. Today, he says, is the day you and I go on a trip together.

  Still nothing from the little girl.

  Bernard stands back from the stovetop and looks at the kitchen. The cabinets that he restored twenty years ago are in need of restoration again. He was never much of a carpenter to begin with.

  He closes his eyes. He can still imagine Marguerite chiding him.

  These doors, they barely close, she would say.

  I did the best I could, he would reply.

  Oh, I know you did. But couldn't you have done a little better? It's I who has to use them every day.

  He misses her.

  The new settlers, unlike the first hundred waves, are permitted small bags of things. Space is precious and finite aboard Station Argus, he is told, though he has seen photographs and videos that prove it is the most vast of palaces

  He packs Angelika's bag with her clothing and shoes and books.

  As he puts things into her bag, he says, Angelika, is this important to bring?

  But she would only look at him with her big, sad eyes.

  In the end, he packed her bag with all he could, and then packed his own with more of her things.

  For himself, he packs only a rubber-banded stack of letters that Marguerite wrote to him when he was in the war, years and years and years before. He smiles at the idea that she would spritz the paper with her perfume before she mailed them to her. He has sniffed at them so often that the scent is gone. But still he breathes deeply whenever he opens them.

  Angelika still bears a fine scar on her brow from the day she stopped speaking. Each time she looks at Bernard, he is reminded of the day. He had collected her from the hospital.

  Angelika and her parents, Jared and Sara -- Bernard's daughter -- had been admitted together.

  Days later, Angelika had been discharged into Bernard's custody, alone.

  He did not attend the funeral. Angelika was barely sleeping, and though she did not speak, she was distraught. He felt if he left her, she would implode. And to carry her to the funeral was beyond consideration.

  So Bernard missed his daughter's burial ceremony.

  The house felt somehow emptier afterward, as though all of the memories that Sara had created within its walls had been sucked away at the moment of her burial. He missed the sounds of her laughter and footsteps, the shadow of her ballet routines cast on the wall by the living room fireplace.

  For a few weeks, he slept on a bed roll on the floor beside Angelika's bed. He wanted to be there when she woke, upset. Eventually she slept through the night without interruption, but Bernard still lay on the floor, awake well into the night.

  He had wished to move to a smaller house in recent years, now that Sara was grown and moved away, and with a baby of her own. But Marguerite would not hear of it.

  This home is my skin now, she had said to him. It's my happiness, my nest. I won't leave it.

  It's so big, he had argued. It's bigger than we need. And we can't keep up with all of the repairs forever.

  But she would not discuss it more after that, and he had finally let it go.

  He is grateful now for this. He cannot imagine enduring life now in a strange place, one with carefully-painted walls and cabinets that don't stick or jerk around.

  In the morning, he and Angelika will travel.

  He peeks into her room and sees that she is asleep. Sir Patrick has fallen to the floor.

  Bernard creeps across the creaking floor and puts the toy dragon on the pillow beside her.

  Angelika sighs in her sleep.

  Angelika, he says. Do you have your bag?

  She walks over to the hallway and points. He looks down the hall and sees her bag resting beside the door.

  Okay, he says. Are we forgetting anything?

  She just looks up at him, then points.

  He looks down.

  Right, he says. My sweater.

  Angelika follows him up the stairs, then leans in his bedroom doorway and watches.

  He stands before the closet, at a loss.

  There's the beige sweater that Marguerite made for him before he shipped overseas. Or the soft blue one that she knitted in front of the downstairs fireplace for their tenth anniversary. There's the sad rust-colored one that he wore when he found her in her chair, cold and peaceful. And there's the green one that she made for their first real family vacation. He had worn it in Hawaii despite the heat.

  My traveling sweater, he had called it.

  Bernard picks up the hanger and turns to Angelika. He holds the sweater up and raises his eyebrows.

  Angelika studies it, then nods once.

  Bernard carefully removes the sweater from the hanger and pulls it on. He replaces the hanger in the closet, then runs his hands over the remaining sweaters. He gathers them in his arms, draws them tight. He tries to hold the sob deep inside so that Angelika won't hear it, but he fails.

  He feels her small hands encircle his leg.

  Bernard cries and cries and cries.

  He is the oldest man aboard the shuttle.

  Even now, over a century after the first settlers fled Earth, citizens over the age of fifty are not permitted to migrate. Angelika, in this case, is Bernard's saving grace. She has inherited her parents' settlement rights, but as an orphan, she cannot migrate without a guardian.

  Bernard slips through the loophole.

  The shuttle traces a golden path through the sky like a sparkler.

  Angelika attends a school in the fourth district of Argus City, and Bernard is assigned employment there as well. He is grateful for this closeness. He cannot bear
the idea of Angelika being whisked away each day while he, at his age, travels equally far to put items into boxes for hours and hours.

  Instead, he stands in the school's cafeteria, watching children eat lunch, and intervening when childhood warfare erupts. He is happy that the children are generally well-behaved. His diplomacy skills have rusted in the years since Sara was a child.

  The days are repetitive, and Bernard settles into the routine with groaning bones and tired hands. Soon he will be too old for this, and what of Angelika then? He worries daily about her future. When he dies, what will happen to her?

  Machine-class residents have little control over these things.

  Bernard wakes to a thumping at the door. Angelika is at his side, pulling at his hand. When she sees that he is awake, she points at the door to their quarters.

  He nods. I'm awake, child.

  He makes his way across their small home to the door.

  Who is it? he asks.

  Courier, comes the reply.

  Angelika retreats into the corner of the room and sinks to the floor. She hasn't grown accustomed to people visiting their home yet.

  Bernard opens the door a sliver and leans into the gap.

  The woman outside says, Congratulations, sir, and hands Bernard a slim package in metallic charcoal-colored paper.

  What is it? he asks.

  Turn it over, she says.

  He does. Embossed on the paper is a single word:

  ONYX

  I don't understand, he says.

  The courier says, I deliver maybe one of these every six months. Don't question it.

  But what is it?

  You should open it, sir, the courier says, and walks away.

  Bernard carries the package to the dining table and sits down.

  Angelika comes over. She looks at the package questioningly.

  Bernard holds it up, turns it over, shows her the embossed label.

  She looks at him with the same question in her eyes.

  I don't know, he says.

  His fingers seem to be trembling.

  Inside are three objects.

  The first is a small, silvery card.

  Bernard inhales sharply.

  He turns the card over. There's an empty rectangle printed on the surface, but nothing else.

  He looks at Angelika. Her curiosity is apparent.

  He presses his thumb against the rectangle.

  The card shimmers to life, revealing an identity profile.

  Micah Roderick Sparrow

  0627J007-1211-E

  H 5'11" W 192

  Bernard says, Oh, my.

  He shows the card to Angelika, who betrays no recognition.

  Do you remember? Bernard asks. We met this man on the shuttle. He tried to give me this card then.

  Angelika shakes her head.

  Right, Bernard says. I had forgotten that you were asleep. Well, this man was there with us. He wanted to give me his card, but the authorities wouldn't let him do it.

  Angelika just looks at him with big eyes.

  Bernard smiles, then touches the rectangle on the card again.

  Micah's profile shimmers away, replaced by a single red line of text:

  Deceased September 12, 2185

  Bernard gasps and drops the card.

  Angelika jumps.

  My god, Bernard says. He stares at the card as if it were a weapon. Then, carefully, he picks it up again.

  He stares at those words.

  Deceased September 12, 2185

  Oh, that poor man, Bernard whispers.

  Angelika points at the rectangle, which is pulsing gently.

  Bernard sighs, and presses his thumb to the card.

  Micah's epitaph vanishes, replaced with a new profile.

  Bernard Samuel Hinske

  1244M943-8920-R

  H 5'9" W 164

  Bernard has no words.

  He stares at the card for a long time. His own photograph stares back with warm, tired old eyes. Then he remembers the other objects in the box.

  The second item is a silvery booklet. The cover reads

  Welcome to the ONYX Program

  Bernard opens it briefly, sees the mountain of words inside, and closes it again.

  Angelika reaches across the table for the third item, then looks up at Bernard.

  He nods. It's okay.

  The final item is a square of pale yellow paper. Angelika unfolds it, reads its contents, then holds it up to Bernard.

  He lifts Angelika into his lap, then reads the paper as well.

  Bernard:

  I won't have any use for this any more. Missing her was too much, and some things here are too dark.

  You, my friend, deserve to raise that little girl in the light.

  Please make the most of that.

  Micah

  Bernard closes his eyes.

  Angelika looks toward the front door a moment before the knock comes.

  Gather your things, my dear, Bernard says.

  And he opens the door.

  Anya studies her reflection in the glass table top. She likes the way her eyes look today, her eyeliner swept outward, as if her eyes are white-hot, leaving vapor trails when she moves. She tilts her head forward, looks up at herself from beneath her dark brow.

  Smoky, Nathan says, returning to the table.

  You think?

  I do.

  Nathan slides into the booth across from Anya.

  Smoky, she repeats.

  No food, Nathan observes.

  Not yet, she says.

  I always thought that using the restroom while you wait for your food was sort of like a cosmic guarantee that when you returned, your food would be hot and ready and waiting for you.

  Anya spreads her hands over the table. If you ordered the imaginary rice curry, then you are correct. But if you didn't, you're just delusional.

  Delusional! Nathan laughs.

  Delusional, Anya says. I, however, have already received and finished my food while you were locked away in the bathroom, powdering your nose.

  My nose never needs powder, Nathan says.

  Anya smiles. No, you're right. Your nose is perfect.

  So, Nathan says, folding his hands. What are we doing today? I heard that there's a movie festival.

  Good movies? Anya asks.

  Nathan shrugs. Probably pretentious movies. Or terrible ones. Aren't all festivals that way?

  I thought we could visit the Japanese gardens.

  There's an idea, Nathan says. A stroll beneath the maples and cherry blossoms.

  The sun is up for another two hours, Anya says. Maybe it will go down while we are in the garden. Like last time.

  What happened last time? a woman asks, sliding into the booth next to Anya. The stranger is almond-skinned, with short, dark hair. The narrow stripe of gray in her hair catches Anya's eye, and her first thought is, Jesus, that's very cool.

  Anya's next thought, which she says aloud, is: What are you doing?

  I thought I'd join you for lunch, the stranger says. Seeing as you're still waiting, I should order.

  The stranger drags her finger across the surface of the table, and quickly taps an item from the menu that swims into view.

  There, she says. A cheese sandwich. What were you two having?

  Nathan leans across the table. Alright, who the hell are you?

  We're having a private lunch, Anya adds.

  The stranger smiles calmly.

  Anya is taken by the stranger's eyes, which seem almost golden in the light. Then the stranger turns and looks directly at her, and Anya realizes that her eyes are a pale green.

  Private lunches in public places, the stranger observes. What a quaint notion.

  I'm going to report this, Nathan says, reaching for his wrist.

  The stranger cocks her head to the side, as if she's listening to someone that Anya can't hear.

  Then she says, I'd rather you didn't -- Matthew.

  Nath
an stops cold.

  His name is Nathan, Anya says. That's all this is, then. You've just got the wrong table.

  The stranger doesn't take her eyes off of Nathan.

  No, she says. This is most certainly the correct table.

  Anya turns to Nathan. You're sweating, she says. Nathan? Are you alright?

  What do you want? Nathan asks.

  The stranger smiles, and this time her smile is genuine, almost friendly. She holds her hand out, and Nathan stares at it, confused.

  I'm Tasneem, the stranger says. And I have a proposition for you, Mr. Bogleman.

  The Japanese gardens occupy a generous portion of real estate on the eastern border of Argus City, a lush green scrawl of land that curves between the city's smaller towers. The land is domed, its personal atmosphere carefully monitored. Thousands of Argus residents filter through the park each week. Humans may have claimed space as their new frontier, but they still crave the Earth.

  Wait, wait, Anya says, struggling with the conversation.

  Tasneem stops and turns back. Yes, Miss Basura?

  Nathan has been strolling next to Tasneem Kyoh, hands in his pockets, brow furrowed, shoulders bowed under a new weight.

  I'm still -- I --

  Tasneem turns to Nathan. I believe she's struggling with your deception.

  You're a Bogleman! Anya spits out. Why didn't you tell me?

  Nathan's eyes are sad. Why would I tell you? That's not who I am.

  Anya says, You tell me because I'm your partner, Nathan. You tell me because we don't lie to each other.