From Ice to Ashes

by Rhett C. Bruno

  A middle-aged Ringer woman exited as I approached the entry of room C-7. She stared blankly forward, tearless. All I wanted to do was place my hand on her shoulder and tell her that everything was going to be all right, but I wasn’t in the mood to lie. I shuffled past her silently, into the contained visiting room.

  The walls inside were white and shiny, but through a glass divider in the center I could see the dreary adjoining visiting area within the quarantine proper. It was bright enough for me to be able to tell that the metal-clad walls were in disrepair.

  I sat in the single chair set in front of the glass. Shortly after, my mom came hobbling over to a seat across from me, the transparent divider separating us by the widest centimeter I could fathom.

  Like all full Ringers she was tall and lean, with white-as-paper skin and knobby joints that appeared more delicate than they really were. The first sign indicating something was wrong with her was that her brown hair was uncharacteristically messy. Frayed strands stuck to her soaring, sweaty forehead and clung to the tip of her flat nose. She’d always kept her hair clean and straight. The second sign was her bloodshot eyes and the dark creases wrapping around them, which only made them appear redder. She looked worse than she had just a day earlier. Like a salt sniffer hankering for a fix.

  “Hi, Mom,” I whispered through the two-way intercom system built into the glass.

  “Kale…You didn’t have to come again,” she responded, appearing as heartbroken as I imagined I must’ve. Her voice was muffled by a sanitary mask far more extensive than mine, but I could tell it was uncharacteristically raspy.

  My mask lifted as I forced a smile. “I wasn’t about to let you be alone.”

  “You don’t need to fake anything with me. I know where I am.”

  I took her advice. “So, how are you feel—” I was cut off when she was seized by a racking cough.

  She turned away and bent over so that I wouldn’t be able to hear it clearly through the intercom. It didn’t work. The struggle of her lungs was evident, and before long she was dry- heaving. There was nothing left inside of her to regurgitate.

  No matter how many times I’d heard the sound since I’d started visiting her, it still made me cringe. By the time she was finally able to withdraw her skinny arm from her mouth, she was laboring to breathe.

  “I’m fine,” she grated, as if nothing had happened. I decided not to draw attention to it. “How are you, Kale? Shifts are starting up again soon, right?”

  “Yup. In a few days,” I said. I paused and took a measured breath. There was no reason to keep hiding the truth from her, since I was going to keep visiting anyway. “Look, Mom, I’m actually staying behind this shift. I’ve already told Captain Saunders. I don’t want to be trapped in Saturn for four months while you’re in here.”

  “Stop that,” she said. “Good work is hard to find these days.”

  “It’s only temporary, I swear. I found a job sweeping up a noodle restaurant in the Uppers, and I plan on finding something else for nights. Maybe the engine factory by home. With both, I should at least make the same as I did on the Piccolo.”

  “Kale.” She said it the way she used to when I came home late and she knew I’d been out getting into trouble. “The proudest day of my life was sending you off to board the Piccolo so you could see something in the universe beyond the enclosure of Darien. Don’t throw that away for me.”

  “Mom, really, I’ll be fine. After we figure this out I’m sure Captain Saunders will take me back—he gave me a shot in the first place. For now, we just have to think about getting you out healthy. Have you talked to Larius about helping?”

  “I told you not to worry yourself about that.”

  “You served him for two decades! By Trass, his clan-brother owns the damn Piccolo, so he’s got to have something lying around. It’s worth trying.”

  “Always the optimist.” She exhaled, so congested that she sounded much like one of the faulty air recyclers in the depths of the Lowers. “Fine, I’ll message him, but for now I want you to focus on you. You need credits too, you know.”

  “Of course. How else am I going to convince a woman as good as you to give me a chance?”

  “Still after Cora, are you?”

  I blushed and shot a glower in her direction.

  She chuckled for as long as she could manage, then began coughing again. Once that abated she said: “Please, Kale, just think about it.” She regarded her bony hands, and then shrugged. “It can’t get any worse.”

  “After all these years you must know you can’t stop me. As long as I’m still breathing, there’s no way I’m letting you be reduced to ashes.”

  I meant that literally. The Ringer dead were almost always cremated, ever since the days of Darien Trass’s first settlers, when the dead were burned for energy…recycled into the wealth and majesty of Titan. After the Great Reunion, when sickness became prevalent, cremation was required by mandate.

  “Better than anybody,” she admitted. She raised her hand to place it against the glass divider, wincing during the entire effort, as if even that small task was a struggle.

  “As long as you promise to keep fighting, I’ll be here trying to get you out.” I pressed my long, latex-clad fingers on the glass across from hers. We held them there for as long as possible—a minute, maybe two—until her weak arm started shaking. It was hardly long enough for me, but that was the closest we could get.

  “Would you mind…,” she began before hesitating. Her lips drooped into a frown and she stared straight into my eyes. I could tell immediately that my least favorite part of every day was coming early. “Letting me get some rest?”

  “Already?” I glanced up at the digital timer on the wall. It’d been only seven minutes. Security allowed each visitor to get a maximum of fifteen. “It’s still early.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I just haven’t been getting much sleep lately, and you came so late.”

  It was difficult for me to look at her and not picture the vibrant woman who’d somehow managed to deal with all the shit I’d put her through, who’d cared for me since I couldn’t even walk. But she did seem exhausted.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I’ve got to start getting ready to sweep the floors at Old World Noodles soon anyway. I can’t wait.”

  My mother wasn’t amused. “I really hope you reconsider that,” she scolded. “I don’t want you to have to—”

  “I know,” I stopped her. Sick or not, I could tell where she was going. “Wind up like my father. I promise I’m staying clean still.” It stung my throat to force the lie out, but for her sake I had to. She was frail enough without having to fear for my safety.

  “Okay…”

  “I’ll be back first thing tomorrow. Same time as usual if the lines aren’t bad.”

  Her lips began to tremble, but she steadied them enough to speak. “You really don’t have to keep coming back every day.”

  “I know that.” I forced another grin. “But I look forward to it from the moment I wake up. I really don’t mind it here. It’s nice and cold. I just wish the glass was gone.”

  She muttered something under her breath. I expected my response to at least make her expression brighten a little, but all it managed to do was get her to angle her despondent gaze away from me.

  “I love you, Mom,” I said.

  “I love you too,” she replied before being beset by another bout of coughs. This time she didn’t bother to let it pass. She just got up and shambled away into the Q-Zone without looking back.

  I lingered for a minute while another Ringer with the same affliction limped in to take her place. This one was in far worse condition. His pale flesh was stippled with rashes and he was skinny, even for a Ringer. His medical gown barely fit, allowing me to see ribs so visible they appeared like the keys of a xylophone. The poor man couldn’t have had more than a week left.

  I rushed from the room. It took a lot out of me, visiting. I lumbered back through the decon-cha
mber, again waiting anxiously the entire time I was inside for me to come up clean. I did.

  After I exited, the elderly receptionist cleared me, and only on her screen did I realize the time. My shift at Old World Noodles was starting in thirty minutes. I really needed to get a new hand-terminal so I could tell the time on my own, even if it couldn’t do anything else.

  Chapter 4

  “Where’ve you been, Drayton?” the manager of Old World Noodles asked me before I could even get through its entrance. The squat Earther wore a cross glare on his broad face, and stood with his thick, hairy arms crossed. I could tell he was propped up on his toes to pretend he was taller than he was. Even then I, and every other working Ringer scattered throughout the Uppers, still had a good half-meter or more on him.

  “Security was tight at decon,” I replied. “I couldn’t get through. It won’t happen again.” It was the best excuse I could come up with, if only because it was true. Sure, I should’ve left earlier, but there was no predicting that the Ringer ahead of me would be caught trying to smuggle something stolen and hold everyone up.

  “Sure,” he replied, his voice dripping with skepticism.

  “Sir, I—”

  “Save it. You’re finished. There’re thousands of others like you in the Lowers who would kill for a job here. I’ve got no time for another lazy-ass Ringer. First to flee Earth, first to ditch a little bit of hard labor. Typical.”

  He shut the door in my face, leaving me with a bevy of additional excuses stuck on the tip of my tongue. Some of the patrons at the tables inside snickered.

  My heart sank. Barely five minutes late and I was out of a cover job. I slowly backed away, deflated and wondering where to go next, when I bumped into something as solid as a boulder.

  “Watch it, Ringer!”

  I caught my balance and whipped my body around. My gaze dropped to see a security officer in full red-and-black Pervenio regalia. Unlike me, our collision didn’t affect him in the slightest, both due to his stocky build and a weighted boiler-suit calibrated to help him acclimate to the G conditions on Titan. The tinted visor of his sleek helmet aimed directly at my face, and he gripped the handle of his sheathed shock-baton a little too comfortably for my taste.

  I decided to move on quickly.

  I was in the lower level of the central atrium at the heart of Darien’s Upper Ward, so if I caused even a hint of trouble there’d be more Earthers on me in a second than I could count.

  Before I took the job on the Piccolo, the Uppers wasn’t a place I often found myself, and even afterward I rarely did more than pass through to the docks. Ringers like me couldn’t afford most of what was sold anyway, so there was rarely a reason to linger. I found it too bright, with all of the countless ads lining the white walls. And definitely too loud. The airy spaces allowed you to hear voices and advertisements echoing from every direction. They all wound up muddled together into a frantic commotion far less melodious than the hum of Lowers machinery.

  It was also hot. Just standing around made sweat leak from every pore. The Uppers were constantly heated to around fifteen degrees Celsius to remain comfortable for its mostly Earther populace. Way too warm for my blood. On the Piccolo everywhere but the Ringer dorms was kept to the liking of Earthers, so I’d grown somewhat used to dealing with it, but it was always nice when I got to return home to a bed where I actually needed covers.

  What I found most discomforting about the Uppers, though, was how spotless everything was. Not that I particularly enjoyed staring at the rusty, grated ceilings and ice-rock-carved walls characteristic of the Lowers, but everything seemed too perfect. I couldn’t even find a wrinkle in the uniforms of patrolling security officers—whose prevalence also didn’t help put me at ease. No matter which direction I looked, there were at least two in sight for every Ringer hard at work performing janitorial jobs similar to the one I’d just lost.

  It’d been like that since I could remember, but things had been growing worse ever since the Titan-wide riots that occurred while I was away. Pervenio kept it off of Solnet, but I’d heard that three security officers wound up beaten to death in the Ziona Colony Block on the other side of Titan during M-day. Things always got heated between our races around that day—when Earthers reveled as if they’d conquered the universe just because Earth wasn’t dead—yet in other years people rarely died of anything but their own carelessness.

  The holiday never really bothered me much. Earth was barely more than a series of old tales and pictures as far as I was concerned. I knew I’d never step foot there. Earthers had their unifying holiday just like we Ringers had Trass Day, named after the man who built the ship that carried our ancestors to the Ring before the Meteorite nearly extinguished all life on Earth. It was celebrated November 10, when they are said to have first touched down on Titan in the year 2036.

  Trass’s towering statue, which rose through the center of the atrium, was the only visible thing in the Upper Ward that remained untouched from before the Earthers arrived and the Ringer Plague left them in charge of renovation. It depicted Darien Trass on his final day on Earth, standing beside a little girl as they pointed toward the sky. The base was wrapped in real plants with frilly pink flowers that were still slick from being watered. A plaque embedded on it read: HE GAVE HIS LIFE TO GIVE US THIS RING.

  The ship he built to escape the Meteorite had limited space, and only the most qualified people were permitted to board. It’s said that the girl beside him was his daughter, and that he sacrificed his position on his ship so that she could go, even though she didn’t meet the requirements. He chose to sacrifice himself rather than any of the other three thousand passengers, none of whom had done much to make the exodus possible. I don’t know many people who would’ve done the same. He could’ve been king of Titan if he’d wanted. Instead, his line merely became one of the many families that helped establish the Ring in the centuries that followed. The last of them were said to have died during the plague following the Great Reunion.

  I took a seat on the bench beside the memorial so that I could gather my thoughts. It was my favorite spot in the Uppers for that, not that it had much competition. Trass gave his life to save what he thought would be the last remnants of humanity. Surely he wouldn’t have sulked after missing out on a job at Old World fucking Noodles.

  I tried to imagine myself being happy working in the Uppers for the rest of my life like my mother had. It wasn’t all bad. Many of the generous walkways were lined with planters like the one around the memorial, displaying all manner of colorful flora that had supposedly thrived outside on Pre-Meteorite Earth. It was a bit pretentious, but I’d always been fond of plants. We didn’t have them in the Lowers. Translucencies cut into the dense enclosure of the Darien Colony Block permitted the whitish glow of Titan’s sky to shine through as well. Down in the Lowers, we never got to see any real sunlight.

  There were plenty of other jobs I could apply for. Employers were always looking for Ringers who had experience working amicably with Earthers to do the jobs that Earthers didn’t want to do. I had that. And I was happy to accept the low wages. They were still higher than what I could make in the Lowers or at the hydro-farms performing similarly menial tasks, since most Ringers refused to take work in a place mobbed with Earthers.

  With my confidence renewed, I went to stand. A Ring-wide Pervenio transmission suddenly popped up on every ad and view-screen in the atrium. The image of Director Sodervall—the voice of Pervenio Corp throughout the Ring—appeared all around me.

  I approached the largest view-screen in sight. A crowd formed around it. Earthers, Ringers, everyone stopped what they were doing. When the Voice of the Ring spoke, everybody listened. It wasn’t often he publically addressed the entirety of the Ring. Usually he spoke of unrest or a new policy, but today he appeared more cheerful than usual. Not that that was saying much. His craggy lips seemed to be permanently stretched into a thin, straight line.

  “People of the Ring!” Director S
odervall began. “Why should we remain divided? Why should we bicker and brawl? Recent troubles on Earth have inspired our great benefactor, Mr. Luxarn Pervenio, to petition the United Sol Federation to reconsider its position on the Departure. Under his proposal, all offworlders, including those from Titan, will be permitted to enter their names in the Departure Lottery, provided they are healthy and have received all available immunizations. The USF Assembly’s vote will be held next week, on November 10. Soon the fight to ensure our survival will rest in all of our hands!”

  A palpable ripple of discontent passed across the entirety of the Upper Ward. The Earthers sitting at a nearby bar grumbled under their breath. I heard one mutter, “Mr. Pervenio is losing his mind,” and another, “Great—next they’ll name one of the Ringers king and we’ll wind up bowing to him. You’ll see.”

  Talking heads appeared on the screens to discuss the announcement. Every Ringer in my vicinity stopped what they were doing and ignored their bosses’ shouts for them to return to work. It was hard to get a read on any of their expressions with their masks on, but many of the eyes I saw were bleeding with contempt. Just like mine were.

  The Departure was the main reason the majority of my people hated M-day, but it wasn’t because they were upset that they couldn’t participate in the Lottery to win a place on an Ark-ship bound for the stars. It was because they believed that there was no reason to spend billions of credits on sending a ship beyond any realistic means of contact—that the Departure was a mockery of what Darien Trass had accomplished under the stress of a meteorite bearing down on Earth.

  I’d never concerned myself with that before. If Earth-born citizens wanted to brave space, I was happy there’d be fewer of them. And yet, the Director’s line about requiring “all available immunizations” caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end and my teeth to grind. I knew firsthand how that essentially discounted 99 percent of Ringers, who if they’d been able to afford them would obviously have sprung their loved ones from quarantine. It was like spitting in our faces. And holding the vote on the 10th, Trass Day, was just rubbing it in.