Hella

by David Gerrold

  “Okay.”

  She hugged me and kissed me again. Then I headed back down to the farm.

  Something else had occurred to me.

  There were seventeen other people who died in the crash. Were any of those other deaths convenient too?

  It’s hard to crash a lifter. They’re self-correcting—even in the strongest turbulence. But without the black box, we still didn’t know for sure what had happened. And so far, the storms had been so strong that Coordinator Layton hadn’t wanted to risk sending out a recovery crew. That was a fair call. Even the heavy-duty scuttle-bots would have a hard time in the heavy winds and rain. Maybe there would be a let-up soon, but it was hard to tell. This time of year, Hella can’t make up her mind just how nasty she wants to be or in which direction.

  When I got back to the apartment, Jeremy was already preparing dinner. I offered to help, but he told me no, he wanted to do this himself. He made thin pancakes and folded them over on a mix of ham bits and eggs, sweet onions and melted cheese. It smelled delicious.

  Usually he had a lot to say, but Jeremy didn’t talk much during dinner.

  Finally, I asked, “Are you angry with me?”

  “Huh? Oh no, kiddo. I’m just—preoccupied.” He put down his fork. “I got an angry call from my father. He’s very upset with me.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “He said I had to stop seeing you.”

  I felt a cold rush of fear and a hot stab of anger, both at the same time. It wasn’t a good feeling.

  “He told me that he was willing to forgive everything else, but not—not this.”

  “Well, maybe I should go then—” I put my napkin down. “I mean, if I’m making things bad for you—”

  “Kyle, no. I’m in charge of my life, not my father. And there are limits to his power.”

  “He could transfer you. Or me.”

  Jeremy took a deep breath and looked across the table at me. He put his hand to his ear as if he was listening for something, then he waved a finger at the ceiling.

  Then he said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay, don’t,” I said.

  “Well, I’m going to work.”

  “Okay, go. I’m going to . . . I don’t know.”

  Jeremy got up, grabbed the teapot and a couple mugs, grabbed the monkey off the shelf, and made a follow-me gesture. We headed toward that last unfinished cave without talking. The monkey searched for snoopies, then came back and sat down between us, without saying anything.

  Jeremy poured tea for both of us, then took a deep breath. “Kyle, do you know the stories about the exiles?”

  “Everybody does. But they’re just stories. Nobody can live outside.”

  “Well—yes and no. Theoretically it’s possible. But the exiles don’t have to. There’s a whole network of lava tubes and tunnels here inside the mountain. I only showed you and J’mee and Charles a little bit of what’s there. You know the legend of the lost team of digger-bots?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They weren’t lost. Well, that’s not true. They were lost. But they were lost on purpose. Kind of. It goes back to the First Hundred, before Winterland Station was built. The digging teams disagreed with the management plans that had been sent out with them from Earth. They felt that the plans should be made by the people who were actually on-site, by people who could adjust the plans to the specific circumstances. But EarthCorp disagreed. They said that they’d surveyed the best sites and they knew better. Still with me? This part is important.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It wasn’t that the diggers were being disloyal—they just felt that they had a better sense of what was needed here. And because they were doing the hard work of digging, they felt they should have more say in the matter. After all, it was their lives at stake. So after the collapse of that tunnel where nine people died, the diggers decided to take matters into their own hands. They began assembling their own bots, one at a time, out of broken bots and spare parts scavenged here and there, and anything else they could use. They started carving their own network of caves, bracing them properly too. Old Town is mostly their work.”

  “I never heard this before.”

  “That’s because after the tunnel collapse, right after the second pilgrimage, the EarthCorp plan was officially set aside. But the extra digger-bots weren’t returned to the main battery. They were set aside by the diggers as a kind of safety thing. Then after a while, they were officially lost and only a few people even know they still exist, they’re still being maintained, and they’re still being used. By an exile community living on the north slope. Thirty-three people.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. And if my father tries to break us up, you and me—and maybe our little monkey friend—we can go there.”

  “Jeremy?”

  “Yes, kiddo?”

  “All these secrets—”

  “Yes. All these secrets. But they weren’t always secrets. It just happened.”

  Jeremy reached over, picked up the teapot, and refilled both our mugs. I hadn’t realized that I’d finished my tea.

  “It’s a long history. There was a group of people—they sort of fell together. Like a club, only not that formal, just some people who would get together regularly and talk about the future of the colony, the best ways to manage a transition from an outpost to a self-sufficient civilization. They were kind of like a self-appointed think tank or advisory committee. They didn’t even have a name, they were just a bunch of people who liked to argue about the logistics of world-building. A lot of it was idealism, I think, and some of it was philosophical, and mostly it was theoretical—but the actual circumstances of Hella always took precedence. Because no matter how good your ideas are, they’re always outvoted by reality, so you have to be pragmatic. And that’s mostly what the group was about, finding solutions to immediate challenges and looking for ways to prevent future problems.”

  “Okay, so—”

  “Wait. Let me finish. Over time, there was enough history of what worked and what didn’t work, the people in the group began to get an idea of how humans would have to adapt to Hella. They called it evolutionary pragmatism. Or pragmatic evolution. Whatever. The more they learned about this world, the more the conversations included what was learned and became more accurate to the circumstances. Anyway, that’s the way it was explained to me. It was always a respectful and friendly discussion where people took out their ideas, showed them around, held them up to the light, and examined them to see if they were worth putting up for the consideration of the Council. That’s all.”

  “So does this club still exist?”

  “No.” He sipped at his tea. “Now it’s a conspiracy.”

  “But how—I mean, who decided it should be a conspiracy?”

  “My father did.”

  “Huh?”

  “My parents always had these furious discussions at the dinner table. Always angry. Toxic, really. They talked about all the people they hated. All the people they wanted to kill. When I was eight, I got angry because my father attacked the father of one of my friends—your brother Jamie, his dad—and he told me I couldn’t play with Jamie anymore. So I disappeared for a week. I built a jammer to mask the signal from my locater and hid out in the caves. Nobody could find me. I knew they were searching because I could monitor the channels, but they were looking in all the wrong places. Some people even thought I’d left the station. But one night, Captain Skyler caught me sneaking into the truckers’ caf to steal food. He asked me why I was hiding, I told him I hated my family. He told me that if I felt that way, he wouldn’t tell anyone where I was, but that if I went back to my family on my own, I could come and talk to him anytime. So I did. For a while it was all right, but then it wasn’t. My dad kept getting angrier and angrier. And my moms too. I couldn’t figure out why, i
t didn’t always make sense. So I—I kinda recorded it.”

  Jeremy looked embarrassed and uncomfortable, even I could see that, so I did something I’d never done before. I reached over and put my hand on his. He looked at it, looked at me, and smiled a different kind of smile, a good one.

  “Anyway, I gave the recordings to Captain Skyler. I told him everything about all the bad things my dads and moms wanted to do. And I told him how scared I was. Captain Skyler asked if he could tell some other people, people who would try to keep my family from hurting anyone. He said I didn’t have to give him permission if I didn’t want to, but it would be a good thing. I really hated my dad right then—and my moms too for pushing him to be that way. He wasn’t always that bad, but something changed inside him after the pilgrimage. I don’t know what. So I said yes. And that’s how the conspiracy started. It started with me.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “And then my dad found out I was talking to Captain Skyler, I don’t know how—but he didn’t find out about the recordings though—and accused him of subverting my affections, stuff like that. So I sued for divorce, and Madam Coordinator and the rest of the Council agreed that I needed to be in a different environment, so they let me join the farm teams, and I didn’t speak to my family again for . . . well, I still don’t speak to them. Captain Skyler and his people were ready to move me even farther away, where my family would never find me. And in fact, later on, I did live with the exiles for a while, helping them with their farms. The discrepancies that HARLIE is looking for—they’re not my father’s doing, it’s the exiles.”

  “Oh.”

  “They call themselves exiles. They’re not really. They’re just people who started out building an observation post on the north slope, then decided to expand it to a bunker, and then kept working on their own time even after it was officially shut down.”

  Now it was Jeremy’s turn to put his hand on top of mine. He said, “There have always been people here who want to exploit Hella’s resources without any regard for the damage they might do to her ecosystems. My father—my whole family—are the most aggressive voices in that movement. When he first got elected to the Council, when it seemed there was a real possibility that he might be able to put some of his destructive policies into play, that’s when Captain Skyler and the others got concerned enough to start thinking about contingency plans.”

  “Like what—a rebellion?”

  “No. More like an opposition movement. A way to resist, even obstruct all those policies that would hurt people—the Self-Sufficiency Resolution and the Genetic Protection Resolution in particular, but those were decoys. My dad really wanted to pass the Reformation Rules. His blueprint for the colony, the Stabilization. You’ve heard the speeches, haven’t you? About how the teams would be more efficient if people would take personal responsibility, and the only way to create that level of responsibility would be to move from colony teams to direct ownership of resources. That would make it possible for everybody to earn their own apartment and have their own kitchen and so on. And they want to turn work credits into money too.”

  “I don’t see what’s wrong with that—”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it. It sounds like a great goal, everybody having their own private space, having a way to manage their personal resources, being lord of their own little castle. But run the math on it, Kyle. It would require a major investment of resources that we can’t afford. We don’t have the bots to build it, let alone maintain it and provide the services to all those residences. And certainly not with another twelve hundred people landing in the spring. We’re going to be stressed out and overcrowded as it is.

  “I don’t have to tell you—if we divert our resources now we’ll only end up making things worse. There’s a cost to be paid in widespread privatization. It adds a whole other kind of bureaucracy, one that’s unregulateable. It’s like adding fat to the meat. A little gives you flavor, a lot gives you a heart attack.

  “I never could figure out why my moms wanted it so much except one time, Bruinhilda, yeah I know what everybody calls her—she got really impatient with my dad and started screaming at him that she didn’t come to Hella to be a workhorse, she came here to be rich. And it was time to do something about that. And that stuck in my head because we really are rich. All of us. We have a whole planet. We just have to learn how it works. And be good custodians. Anyway—now you know why I don’t have anything to do with my family. They’re not the kind of people I want to be.”

  “I’m sorry.” I searched for the right words to say. “You deserve better.”

  “Yeah, well—” He smiled gently. “I think I’m lucky. Because I know what I got away from. Captain Skyler saved my life. You know, I could have stayed in the caves. Crazy Man Johnson did it for years. That’s where I got the idea. Only it’s a lot harder than they tell you. I mean, just finding a place to go to the bathroom—and what do you do for toilet paper? Recharging your light-sticks? Keeping warm at night? Finding something to do instead of sitting alone in the dark? Sneaking food out of the caf without being caught? Keeping away from the people who are searching for you, not leaving any evidence behind, it’s a lot of work. It’s easier to just get along with everyone else. And if it’s hard for one person, it’s even harder for two or ten or thirty people. And there are things you miss, too. Like tea.” He looked at his cup. It was empty.

  “See,” he said, as we gathered up the mugs and the teapot. “Opting out isn’t a good answer, because you’re still dependent on everyone else to provide resources for you, but you’re not contributing anything back to them. And you’re also not in a position to effect any change. And that’s the thing. Captain Skyler wanted to stop my family from hurting other people.” Jeremy stopped where he was, shaking his head and looking around as if the answer might be lurking somewhere in the dark. “I don’t know what to do anymore. But I know I’m not going to do the wrong thing.”

  I picked up the monkey and waited for him to say something else. Finally, I had to ask, “So . . . um, what is the right thing to do? What was Captain Skyler planning?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever plan he might have had, it went down with him in the lifter crash. The only person who might have known what he was thinking would be your mom.” Jeremy stopped. He took a deep breath.

  “Jeremy . . . ?” I had trouble saying it. “Did your dad . . . do something to the lifter? To make it crash?”

  He looked down at his feet. “I don’t know. Nobody does. I know they were supposed to have a meeting. The whole Council. And Captain Boynton too. With Captain Boynton on board, they would have had the votes to stop my dad. So, um, yeah, it does look suspicious, doesn’t it?”

  Something twanged. “Jeremy, you said my mom might know. You gotta tell me. Is she in danger?”

  “I don’t think so. Not now.”

  “But what if—what if she organizes and stands for office in the next election?”

  “I don’t know. There’s an old saying about dictators and toddlers. When they get what they want, they don’t let go of it.”

  I thought about that. “That’s a metaphor, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s more a simile.”

  “Well, I get it. I do.”

  We hiked all the way back to his place—our place now.

  “So, um—what are we going to do?” I asked.

  “I dunno. Not yet. We have to keep thinking.” Then he added, “But sooner or later, we will choose something. Because if we don’t, the universe will choose for us and I don’t think we’ll like that.”

  I helped Jeremy clean up the dinner dishes, and then because we were both so tired, we crawled into bed together.

  Jeremy kissed me goodnight and that was nice. Then he rolled back to his side of the bed.

  “Jeremy?”

  “Yes, Kyle?”

  I cleared my
throat. I hesitated, fumbling around in my head for the right words. “I’ve been thinking. About us. You and me.”

  “Uh-huh? And?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking that maybe I could go back to being a girl. If that would make you happy?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “The thing is . . . I mostly only changed because Jamie was changing. I didn’t really know there was a difference between boys and girls. Not then. It was just about being able to pee standing up.” This was the hard part. “But I saw how you looked at J’mee . . . and . . .”

  “And what?”

  “Well, I think I should ask you what you want.”

  He rolled over on his side to face me. “I would like you either way, Kyle. The important thing is that you should be happy.”

  “But will it make you happy too? If I change.”

  Jeremy sat up on one elbow. “Kyle, I’m really impressed that you should ask. Because I know you don’t think about other people’s feelings a lot. Not your fault, it’s just the way you’re wired up. But the fact that you even asked—that means a lot to me. It really does.”

  “Jamie taught me that. We used to sit around the table and he would say, ‘Now ask me how I feel. Ask me what I think.’ He said I should learn to do that, because that would help me learn about other people.”

  “Well, I’m glad he did,” Jeremy said. “Okay, listen. Choose what makes you happy. If you change or don’t change because I say you should or shouldn’t, well—that’s letting someone else tell you who to be. And I don’t want you to do that. I want you to be the person you want to be.” He put his hand on my cheek. “You’re my strange sweet wonder. Just be that and I’ll be happy.”

  “Okay,” I said. I kissed him back, this time because I wanted to, and we curled up together.

  That was weird. I didn’t know that sometimes hugging could be so nice.