Hella

by David Gerrold

  Here, my soul—my very weird different soul—remembers a world I’ve never seen. And I float in its memory, finding a strange familiar peace inside myself.

  I close my eyes and drift. Not quite asleep, but dreaming anyway. I don’t know how long. Until a voice woke me up—

  “Kyle? What are you doing down here? Everybody’s looking for you.”

  “Huh?” I turned around, startled. “Jeremy?”

  Jeremy Layton. He’s Marley’s older brother. He has reddish-brown hair perpetually rumpled, and he’s almost two Hella-years older than me. He’s permanently stationed at Winterland, and Jamie said it’s because he’s “estranged.” I had to look that word up. The first time I heard it, I thought it meant somebody or something had made him strange, so I thought he might be like me, but that’s not what the word means at all. It means “alienated” or “separated.” It means that he and Councilor Layton don’t talk to each other. But nobody knows all the details. Jamie thinks it has something to do with Marley.

  I’d seen Jeremy around the farm levels from time to time, but I never really spoke to him. Jamie said that Jeremy doesn’t like people and keeps away from everybody, so working the farms is perfect for him.

  “Kyle, you need to go back upstairs—”

  “Why?”

  “Your mother needs you. Right now.”

  “She didn’t call me—” I pulled out my pad. It was on silent mode. “Oh.” The screen blazed with missed calls and waiting messages.

  “Come on, I’ll take you up.” Jeremy handed me my longshirt. He didn’t seem to care that I was naked, but I didn’t know him and I didn’t want him looking at me. I turned my back on him and pulled my shirt on quickly. Before I had even finished settling it around me, he touched my elbow.

  I shook him off. “I can find my own way.”

  “I’ll take you anyway.”

  “Why? What’s going on? Did something happen?”

  “All I know is that your mom wants you, right now. She’s at the Council Office.” Jeremy touched his com-set. “I’ve got Kyle. I’m bringing him up now.”

  “What’s the big deal?” I asked. “Anyone wants to know where I am, where anybody is, all they have to do is ask their pad. Everybody’s got a chip.”

  “That’s right. That’s how I found you.”

  “Why should you care?”

  Jeremy didn’t answer right away. We stepped into the elevator and the door whooshed shut. As we rose up, he said, “Kyle. I’m not my sister.” And then he added, “I’m not in that family. Not anymore. Okay? And even if you and I aren’t friends, we’re not enemies either.”

  I didn’t say anything. I’d have to think about this.

  Inside the Council Room, Mom stood in the center of a whole bunch of other people. They all looked over at me when Jeremy and I walked in. That was weird. They all looked weird. Mom came over and put her arms around me. That was even weirder. She hardly ever touched me because she knows how much I don’t like being touched. But she was crying, and she pulled me close against her, and I sort of knew that this was important to her.

  She started to speak, but she couldn’t get the words out. Lilla-Jack stepped in close. “Kyle. Something’s happened.”

  “Is it Jamie?” For a moment, I felt like I was falling downward right out of my body.

  “No, Jamie’s all right,” she said, and I bounced back up inside myself. As long as Jamie was all right—

  “Madam Coordinator was flying to Winterland to meet the new people. But the lifter got caught in a sudden squall. And it crashed. It doesn’t look like there were any survivors.”

  “Oh no,” I said, because that was what you said when you heard bad news. But what did this have to do with me and Mom?

  Lilla-Jack hesitated. “The pilot was—the pilot was Captain Skyler.”

  “Oh no,” I said again. “No, no, no, no! That’s not right. He’s the best pilot on Hella. He wouldn’t crash. He couldn’t—” I said a lot of stuff like that. But the walls of the Council Room were full of pictures. Lots of pictures. All the pictures I’d seen before. Skyballs circling. Wreckage scattered across the slope of a hill. A blackened scar and burning trees. A pillar of smoke. Lightning flashes. The same pictures that had been on my wall when I’d headed down to the gardens. I’d ignored them. They were nothing—but they weren’t nothing. They were something awful.

  “A rescue? Are you sending a rescue team? I’ll bet they’re alive. You have to go look. Maybe they survived. He’s too good a pilot—”

  Lilla-Jack turned me to look at the wall. “We’re not sending anyone out in that weather. Maybe when it clears. But look hard, Kyle. There’s nothing moving down there. The scanners show no movement in the wreckage, no heat signatures, no life signs at all—”

  “But what about their microchips? What do they say?”

  Lilla-Jack took a breath. “There are no signals. There aren’t any survivors, Kyle. There aren’t.”

  I looked to Mom. I’d never seen her face so contorted with emotion. She grabbed me again and sobbed into my shoulder, saying, “Oh, Kyle, Kyle, Kyle,” over and over and over again. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say in return, so I said nothing. But I knew I was supposed to put my arms around her, so I did that.

  Finally she stopped and pulled away and grabbed a paper towel to wipe the snot off her face. Someone pushed a mug of hot tea into her hands. She held it, turning it back and forth between her palms, shaking her head slowly and staring at nothing in particular.

  Somebody handed me a mug of tea, and I sipped at it too. I think it was supposed to calm me, but it didn’t. Suddenly I felt restless. I pulled out my pad and punched for Jamie. Maybe they didn’t know at Summerland. Maybe they did. But if he hadn’t called by now, then maybe he was working or sleeping or—I don’t know. I just needed to talk to him. Mom needed to talk to him too.

  I couldn’t get through, but there was a message from him. Oh, good. He’d heard. I punched for the message.

  “Hiya, kiddo! Great news. I’m gonna be there for your Passage Ceremony after all! Because the last migration got cancelled, there are too many people here at Summerland, so Captain Skyler asked me and Emily-Faith and a few others to come south with him. We’re flying with Madam Coordinator on one of the big cargo lifters. We should be there in a few hours. Gotta run! Go tell Mom!”

  And then I did fall through the floor, screaming all the way down as far as I could go and all the voices chattering were very far away and getting farther all the time. I fought it all the way down, everything red and blind, screeching and flailing, wailing as hard as I could, screaming at the awfulness of the moment, the longest moment ever—until I wasn’t there at all anymore. My body fell down without me in it, so exhausted it didn’t even have the strength to breathe, too exhausted even to die. Someone blue hovered over me. A breathing mask on my face. “Slowly, Kyle. Slowly,” someone said. Something cold touched my arm.

  * * *

  —

  I floated awake. I opened my eyes. A medi-bot waited patiently by the side of my bed. It chimed softly. “Someone will be here in a moment, Kyle. Please rest easy.”

  Mom came in and sat down beside my bed. She reached over and put her hand on mine. She didn’t say anything, just looked at me with those huge brown eyes of hers. Tears streaked her cheeks. Then she lowered herself down onto the bed next to me and stayed that way for the longest time. After a while, I fell asleep again.

  * * *

  —

  They kept me sedated. Several days maybe. I couldn’t tell. Sometimes I heard voices. Sometimes I would wake up and there would be someone sitting there. Once it was Lilla-Jack. Another time it was Jeremy Layton. Usually it was Mom. I remember sipping soup through a straw.

  One day, I got out of bed, pulled on a blue longshirt and walked out into the corridor. It was dark, past midnight. I
found my way home, crawled into my own bed, and fell back asleep.

  Just before dawn, Mom came in and sat down on my bed. “Are you all right?”

  “I had a bad dream,” I said. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “No.”

  I don’t like dreaming. I wake up feeling weird, not sure what’s real and what isn’t. It happens every migration. The first week or three, I have strange disturbing dreams. Things chase me. Giant horrible faces come up over the horizon and stare at me. I’m naked and people are looking at me. Once, I even dreamt that someone else pressed naked against me. I woke up shaking that time.

  One day, I decided to get up. I couldn’t stay in bed anymore.

  There was a memorial service. I don’t remember much. I sat between Mom and Lilla-Jack. A lot of people said nice things about a lot of other people. I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t want to be there at all. It was silly and boring and didn’t change anything. But they played music. Sometimes I can listen to music. There’s a kind of math in music. It’s obvious when you hear it, but it’s even more obvious when you see it on the page. Especially Bach—here’s a line of little insect-notes marching up, alternating with another line of little insect-notes marching down. It has its own specific symmetry on the page and then when you hear it there’s a different kind of symmetry—what some people call beautiful.

  Sometimes on the page, as the two lines of notes go up and down, around each other, it looks like a double-helix spiraling around itself. Hearing the same score played you can hear the difference between the lines of notes shrinking and stretching in methodical purity. It’s a compelling structure, and the deeper I listen, the farther it takes me from myself. And I needed to get very far.

  Afterward, there was a gathering in the caf. Lots of special food was served. Cucumber and pickled carrots, raw tuna and raw salmon, everything wrapped in pickled rice and dried seaweed. Mango slices on sweet rice. Miso soup. Four bean salad. Potato salad. Sharp-tangy coleslaw. Noodle bowls with shrimp and chicken. Tempura. Even slices of roast beef for sandwiches. Mustard, horseradish, relish, ketchup. Huge loaves of bread, soft pumpernickel, rye, and buttermilk. Crepes filled with fruit sauces. It was almost a festival. It felt wrong.

  There’s this about funerals. They all end the same way. Someone says, “Let’s go eat.”

  And then life goes on, the same but different. And there’s this big aching hole that never goes away. It just reminds you a little bit every day of what’s not there anymore. Every time you expect the pad to chime or you want to send a message or something reminds you of something—there’s no one there.

  And life goes on. And on and on. Every day. The same but different. But now, Mom has no one to talk to and neither do I. And that means Mom has to talk to me—except as much as Mom and I are family, we don’t speak the same language. She speaks nuance. I speak Kyle.

  So I went to the garden. A lot. It was a safe place to get away. A safe place to not-think.

  Sometimes Jeremy Layton would come and sit with me. He didn’t talk much, but he’d bring his lunch and share it with me. Jeremy didn’t come up to the caf to eat. He picked tomatoes and corn and peas from the farm, his way of testing them for flavor and ripeness. Sometimes he brought fresh fruit or melons.

  I asked him if it was all right for us to be eating the produce. He said that he was cross-breeding for flavor and texture and nutrition, so it was part of his job to taste-test. It was a privilege with a purpose.

  Jeremy was strange. Stranger even than me. But strange in a different way. One day, he sat down next to me in the garden. He said, “Tom Bombadil.”

  “Who?” I didn’t know any Tom Bomby-dill.

  He said, “That’s who I want to be. Tom Bombadil. He’s a nature-spirit. He’s the master of wood, water, and hill.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “He’s a character in a story.”

  “I don’t like stories. I don’t like things that aren’t real. All that make-believe, it gets in the way.”

  “Yes it does. Especially all the make-believe we have about stuff that’s real.”

  It took me a minute to decode that sentence. I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Nuance again.

  After a minute, Jeremy said, “In a way, you’re lucky, Kyle. The world is what it is to you. You deal with what you see and what you hear, and you don’t see what isn’t there, and you don’t hear what isn’t there.” He added, “Too many people are more about the what-isn’t than the what-is.”

  “What Jamie calls nuance?”

  “That’s a good word for it.” He chewed thoughtfully, while he considered his next words. “But I think nuance is only the part of the iceberg that shows above the water. The rest . . . ?” He paused, like he didn’t know if he would finish the sentence, but then he did. “Sometimes, I see more of the iceberg than I want to.”

  I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Is that a metaphor?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I guess it is. What I’m trying to say . . .” Another long pause. “I don’t like a lot of what I see. People hurt. They hurt so much. And instead of getting better, they get worse. They get tied up inside in terrible knots.”

  “Like me?”

  “No, not like you. Like other people who think too much about how to be the right kind of people. I think that’s what’s wrong with us. People don’t know how to be people. They only know how to be things—and then they get hurt because they get treated like things.” Another long pause. The longest of all. “That’s why I like plants better. What’s there is what’s there. Only that and nothing else. You don’t understand any of this, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “See, that’s why you’re lucky. You don’t see it, so it doesn’t frustrate you.”

  “I get frustrated.”

  “You get frustrated when people aren’t saying what they mean. But nobody ever says what they mean, do they?”

  “I do. Don’t I?”

  “Yes, you do. That’s why other people sometimes have a hard time with you.” He smiled. He lifted a hand as if he was going to pat my shoulder, but then he put it down. “Sorry, I forgot.”

  “It’s okay. Is it all right if I ask you something?”

  “What do you want to ask?”

  “Why are you estranged?”

  “It’s a long story, Kyle, and I’m afraid that most of it would bore you. Let’s just say that some of the people in my family aren’t very nice. And some of the others put up with it when they shouldn’t. One day, I decided I didn’t want to be part of that anymore. Do you know what an enabler is?”

  I shook my head.

  “An enabler is someone who makes it possible for other people to do bad or stupid things.”

  “Oh.” I still didn’t understand. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “Because they tell themselves they have to. They don’t, but they think they do.”

  “That’s . . . stupid.”

  “Yes it is. And people get hurt.”

  “Then it’s stupid and wrong.”

  “Yes. But they do it anyway.”

  I shook my head, trying to shake it all away. This was getting frustrating.

  “Here.” He handed me a peach. “See if this helps.”

  It did. Peaches are good. A little too juicy, but they taste so good it’s worth it.

  * * *

  —

  Back upstairs, a lot of things were all going on at the same time. The Council had an emergency meeting and they selected Councilor Layton to replace Madam Coordinator. Then he made a speech about the job. He said that we had suffered a great loss, but we would honor the memories of those who died by moving forward decisively.

  We listened in our apartment. Mom and L
illa-Jack and a couple others. Mom listened with a sour face and when he was all finished, she made herself a cup of coffee. She poured a shot of brandy into it. “Well, one good thing at least—he won’t live forever either.”

  Lilla-Jack poured coffee for herself and for the others as well. Nobody looked happy. “Well, now that he’s got the authority he’s always wanted, this will end his agitation for an eastern station.”

  Mom said, “With him in control, I’ll start agitating for a eastern colony—just to get away.”

  Lilla-Jack muttered something to herself.

  “What?” That was Sammel Weiss, an older man with a great cloud of wispy white hair. I loved to watch his hair flutter when he sat too close to a fan.

  Lilla-Jack said it again, this time a little louder. “Awfully convenient for him, that damn lifter crash.”

  Sammel nodded. “He couldn’t have done better if he’d planned it.”

  Mom said, “He’s not that evil. And he’s not that stupid.”

  “No,” said Lilla-Jack. “He’s not. But Bruinhilda and the others—”

  “I think this is a dangerous conversation to have,” Sammel interrupted. “As much as we dislike this man, it does not help us or anyone to imagine a conspiracy.”

  “You’re right,” sighed Mom. She put her coffee down. She noticed me, sitting and watching. “Kyle, please don’t tell anyone what you heard. It might be . . . It would be wrong, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  A few days later, Coordinator Layton announced some policy changes. He said they were little things, designed to make the stations work more efficiently. Some people applauded, some grumbled. Life went on. But one of the things he did that I didn’t like—he pardoned Marley. He said that it was an unfair burden on her and on her family to be separated, and another unfair burden on the researchers at Bitch Station to have to be jailers, so he was bringing Marley back, and she would go to work in the farms with her brother instead. Mom said that nobody liked that decision, but right now, with everything else going on, it was the wrong thing to pick a fight about.