Nara

by M. L. Buchman

  The obstruction grunted as she spun sideways, slammed to the deck, and careened into a tool locker.

  Ri swung to her knees to face her attacker, but collapsed to the deck as her damaged knees came in contact with the hard decking.

  Her assailant was also knocked from his feet. He crawled over until he was looking down at her, upside down.

  His dark eyes were shadowed by the long hair that flowed downward on either side of his face in great soft waves. She could see his lips move, but her ears were still full of the winds of Nara.

  “Are you okay?” the lips repeated.

  She nodded until she made the mistake of moving one of her legs. The shot of pain roared up her body and she jerked upright to inspect the damage. Their heads struck sharply and the man cursed as he disappeared from her vision and she lay once again upon the decking with both hands on her now damaged forehead.

  “What did I ever do to you? Shit, that hurts.”

  She couldn’t agree more. When she could bear to move her hands aside from the knot she was sure was already forming, she arched her neck to look behind her. A long-limbed man held his nose tentatively between his fingertips, wiggling it slightly. His eyes were slightly crossed as he tried to sight down its length.

  Her lungs still dragged for air and her heart rate had done nothing about settling. Making sure the way was clear, she sat up and inspected her knees. The left one was just a bit sore. The right was another matter. The shipsuit was shredded by the non-skid decking surface and her knee looked little better, with blood oozing out of a hatchwork of cuts and scrapes.

  She struggled to her feet, and suddenly a large pair of strong hands were lifting her until she was upright. A steadying hand remained on her upper arm to make sure the breeze from the ventilators didn’t return her to the deck. The hand didn’t just support her arm, it encased it. It was large without being massive. She followed it up a long arm, past his shoulder to a concerned look far above her. Her head barely reached his shoulder.

  An initial shrug didn’t dislodge his grasp but the second succeeded.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Running.”

  He tossed his hair aside with a casual twist of his neck. The corridor lights revealed his strong face in sharp angles. It was somehow familiar, but she was unable to place it. By now everyone aboard had a fair chance of looking familiar, Stellar One wasn’t all that big a community.

  “What about you?”

  “Climbing down a ladder. I never believed that old saw about the last step being a doozy. I know better now.” He rubbed a long finger beside his nose. No smile flashed across his face as it would have Captain Turner’s. Just a slight twist at the corners of his eyes. One point in his favor. A glance over his shoulder revealed the ladder in question, a dozen paces back along the side of the corridor.

  “Is there an autodoc up that ladder? My knee is a bit banged up.”

  The man glanced down and any hint of amusement disappeared. “Shit. Did I do that? I’m sorry.” He bent down with a look of genuine concern wrinkling his broad brow.

  “No. I did that. When I slammed into a walking brick wall at a dead run. My apologies.” Ri tried to bow, and nearly fell on her face in the process. Catching herself on her bad leg was a major tactical error. Her stumble and hiss of pain brought his hand back to her arm. She’d had enough of men for the moment and shrugged him off once again.

  She hobbled toward the ladder. He watched her for a frozen moment and then leapt ahead as if she were going to steal his ladder. He shot up the rungs, opened the hatch, and moved into the room above. For a second she thought he was going to lock her down in the maintenance level and she’d have to stumble to the next hatch several hundred meters along. Then his face looked down clearly waiting for her to follow.

  Did men exist who still opened doors like they had in the old books? Not likely, just some weirdo, R4 denizen. Ri considered continuing to the next hatch, but the first step put any thought of that out of her mind. It took all her willpower to reach the ladder without showing the razors of pain scorching up her leg.

  Thankfully her arms were strong enough that she was able to move up the ladder without bending the right leg. He reached out to help her once her shoulders were clear of the hatch, but he backed away after a single glare. He moved off, disappearing into the darkness. She stepped clear of the hatch and it slid shut plunging the room into complete darkness.

  What had she just let herself in for? She stumbled backward and ran into a large plas tank. But it was too warm, it was nearly body temperature. A flail of her arm contacted some kind of ropes or hoses. Nothing loose for a weapon. Before she could scream for her Cadre of hunters, a hatch opened in the wall to her right and she shot out, bad knee or no. Best strategy in a fight, don’t be there.

  A half-dozen steps later she stumbled to a halt. Stools, a scattering of small tables, chairs. Lines of light and dark, more dark, slashed across the space, revealing and hiding at the same time. She was in a café or bar. Bar. To her left a long sweep of plas counter sported two small clusters of taps: one lit, one shaded. Racks of mugs were arrayed neatly beneath the bar.

  Ri turned to face her companion. He moved behind the bar and came to a rest with his large hands resting lightly on the pale surface. He took root there as if he were a painting and had never been anywhere else. Darkness hid his face. A hand raised through a shadow and into a patch of light as he pointed a finger down the corridor.

  “A few dozen paces on the right.” The hand settled back through shadow to rest on the bar.

  She limped off and slid into the narrow booth below the red cross high on the wall. She got off easy. A general analgesic eased the bulk of the pain quickly. A myriad of microfractures in her patella meant her knee would be sore for several more weeks, though the temporary skin graft should slough off just fine in about a week.

  She cut off the lecture about blood sugar and eating properly, her last meal was yesterday’s breakfast. Or perhaps the day before’s dinner. She damn well knew about her blood sugar.

  The report of the cancelled session would be sent to the medical office, but she didn’t care. She knew they were too busy with broken bones and a backlog of fight injuries to care either.

  Ri stood in the corridor, dimmed down for nighttime, and considered her options. She could head toward the lifts and return to R1. Just let the stranger drift back into his anonymity. He could have long since continued his journey homeward. But no one needed L0 to get to their apartment. No one except service crew were ever supposed to be down there.

  Without conscious decision, she hobbled back toward the bar, away from the lifts leading to the core. A single bright light revealed a sweeping parrot wing making the letter from which it sprang leap upward. R4U. Too many possibilities to guess about a meaning. Even with the apparently obvious allusion to Ring Four.

  She continued back into shadow where scatterings of the dim corridor lights revealed that the man had not moved from his post. As Ri drew closer she saw that this assessment was inaccurate. Two mugs of beer rested on the otherwise clean bar. One beside his hand, a few sips missing. The other, before the central bar stool and was still foamy to the brim.

  After the Icarus and Jackson Turner and smashing her knee, a beer looked awfully good. It was cold and sweaty to the touch when she raised it and knocked back a large swallow. It slid down her dry throat and all her muscles, still torqued from the collision, eased off at once. With her muscles gone liquid, she more melted than settled to the barstool as the man continued to regard her.

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded and returned to his standard state of silence. Not much of a conversationalist.

  “You the bartender?”

  Another nod, this time with that humored crinkling about the eyes. Right. Man serving beer from behind a bar at three in the morning to a partially cripple
d officer. Of course he’s a bartender.

  She took another sip.

  His hands. One wrapped around his mug. The other clutching a bar towel.

  “I know you from somewhere.”

  The sense of play dropped from him like a stone into deep water.

  “Your hands. I recognize your hands.” Nice, strong hands. Ones that had been used for work without becoming heavy and coarse. Just strong. Then she had it.

  “The Desert Pub. You were the bartender there as well. Unless you have a twin brother.”

  “Just me,” he offered with a whisper that barely managed the passage through the shadows between them.

  The bartender that afternoon. Yesterday afternoon. Jackson Turner had occurred since yesterday afternoon. Damn.

  She slammed back another swallow of beer and smacked the mug against the plas. The man across from her still didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Barely breathed. Why did she always run into the strange ones? She slid off the barstool, but her turn was a little too quick and her knee gave. She caught herself on a chair, he was half around the bar by the time she had control again. He halted in the deep shadow by the door to what must be his brewery and the hatch to down below.

  The silence stretched out until it had a palpable texture. It flowed between them like a barrier. He was the opposite of Jackson Turner who seemed to always have a way of putting her at her ease. This man brought out her anger, or was it her fear, this afternoon at the pub. Her fear. Pinpointed and tacked down.

  She feared she wouldn’t be welcome in the bounds of the lively, charmed circle which flowed along in Captain Jackson Turner’s wake. The fear that had surged up like a blown airlock and shot her out the Desert Pub’s door only to get lost in the vortex of Turner himself. The fear of never again having a cadre. A place to be welcome. A place to be at rest.

  The fear that threatened to wash her out of this Ring Four Unlit bar which she conquered consciously by pure stubbornness.

  “Do you have a name?”

  This brought a nod. It was too dark to see if any part of the smile had returned. He gave her enough time to consider coming over into his shadows to physically wrestle speech from the man before continuing.

  “Bryce.”

  “Hi, I’m Ri. Biologics Liaison.”

  This time it was he who was startled from his dark corner into a crossing slash of light.

  “The voice. I know your voice. Officer of the Watch. Ri…hold on… Officer Ri Jefferson.”

  “Jeffers. When—”

  “Day of The End. I woke up in transit quarters to the sound of your voice telling us about the end of the world.”

  He took a step forward. His speech was slow, yet with untapped power, like the first evening breeze from the unseen ocean beyond Nara. Wandering around corners, hugging buildings, slipping through shattered windows, but enough to give everyone pause.

  “I woke alone. I shouldn’t have. Wasn’t meant to wake at all, I guess. Would have been okay.” His voice wavered out of focus as did most people’s on the rare occasions they mentioned The End. As if he were surprised that some woman left his bed because he overslept on the worst morning in history.

  Ri had learned to avoid the subject for the sake of others, The End lacked much charge for her. Her world had died months earlier with the death of the last of Tancho Cadre on the shattered streets of Nara, Japan. She pushed even that glancing blow deep down where even she couldn’t feel it. She wished.

  “I remember wondering about your voice. In the midst of it all. You were strong. Remote.” A smile struggled past his lips and played with his eyes.

  “I wondered if you were human. So calm in the storm.”

  “And?” It was hard not to return his reluctant smile.

  “Jury’s still out.” He wrapped the bar towel around his hand and wrapped the ends into a fist. “Still out on a lot of things.”

  Ri’s leg was aching. She either needed to sit down or go.

  “Thanks.” He worried at the towel, as if straightening out the wrinkles of it were the most urgent task he had.

  “For what?” Watch started in under an hour. If she sat, she probably wouldn’t be getting there any time soon.

  “For noticing. I used to like the fact that bartenders blend into the background, but sometimes it’s nice not to.”

  Sitting won, she pulled a chair off a table and dropped into it.

  “What happens when you blend in? What’s that like?” Ri had never belonged anywhere since the Angel-lady had rescued her from Nara. The sole Japanese person walking the planet. The instant signal of danger to any who had lived through the Crash and Smash fifty years before.

  Bryce took a step back and faded into shadow. “This. I disappear. People come here to drink. To drink hard. Even more since the Captain’s speech.”

  Ri was disoriented for a moment. What speech had Jackson Turner made that she’d missed? Then she knew he meant Captain Conrad’s New Year’s address.

  “Ad Astra.”

  “Right.” He waved toward the long, empty counter, only his arms in the light, painting a picture with no man to control them. “They come to drink down that lost dream. To blow off the steam that has no outlet, but builds within these plas corridors. No winds to carry it away. Sometimes it is so thick in here that the people blur and I can’t see them any more than they see me. All the same. All without hope. All without a home.”

  “This is their home.” Ri jabbed her finger down toward the deck.

  “This is the colonist’s home. But these are space fabrication workers. The elite of the construction industry. Now they’re mucking about in the soil of the ag-bays. Crawling like the rest of us ants among the precious food crops of our survival. Ad Astra. Shit lady, open your eyes. They come here to pretend there is something beyond themselves, some sort of hope.”

  Ri fought against the tightness in her chest and finally managed to gasp in some air.

  The man was staring down at his precisely arranged bar towel, all layered in neat folds across the back of his hand, as if exhausted by producing so many words in a row. “But it’s only temporary. An illusion that we cannot much longer accept. The facade is wearing thin.”

  Ri rose to her feet, no longer feeling the pain of her mangled kneecap.

  “I choose to look with different eyes.”

  She turned, more carefully this time, and left the half-finished beer, the bar, and the glum man behind in his own shadowed cloud. She staggered to the hallway fighting her way through the chairs. Too many had died. In her first hour, Donnie had uncovered at least a hundred unreported deaths over the last four weeks. There must be hope. Carla was wrong to give up and freeze alone in her dead Arctic night.

  Ri managed to move along the corridor until the bright ceiling lights washed down on her and she could breathe in the corridors the color of sunlight. She took a lift up to L3 simply to get away from the bartender. She was almost to the wall of the jungle biome when she found a lift to the core. She hooked her feet and zoomed upward, the gravity dropping away from her as she rose.

  She drew deep bouts of air into her lungs to fight the nausea. She shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach.

  And it was not an illusion. The future was full of possibilities.

  It had to be.

  # # #

  The corridor was dead quiet by the time Jaron finished the plant respiration analysis. Something was out of balance in his biome. He strode from the jungle toward his quarters and passed by the bar. He noticed the bright emblem on the wall had become a little scuffed and faded over the last few weeks.

  The place was so empty and quiet that Jaron didn’t notice Bryce until he called out.

  “Have a beer on me, Jaron.” He was already drawing a half-liter.

  Jaron accepted the cool glass. It felt good to rub it across his brow. There were
two mugs on the counter, one empty, one barely half gone. Bryce poured out the latter and wiped up the spill around it as Jaron sat.

  “This brew’s a new flavor, made up a batch using the leftover papaya coming out of your biome. It’s actually been quite popular.”

  Jaron sipped the pale liquid. It did have a strong hint of papaya, but it was more in the smell than the flavor. It was sweet and ripe and full of life. It was almost like being in the jungle breathing deeply of the ripening fruit somewhere in the distance.

  He set the glass on the bar and nodded. “That’s a good one, Bryce. You’ve written it down?”

  Bryce tapped his forehead. “Safe as can be.”

  Jaron nodded and then took another sip.

  “What are you doing out at 4 a.m.?”

  He hadn’t realized it was so late. “CO2 analysis of the diurnal cycle. Something riding down hard on the CO2 level, but I’m having a hard time finding it.”

  “Anything toxic?” Bryce poured himself a mug and offered to refill Jaron’s.

  He shook his head. “No. Nothing that significant, but it is almost three-tenths of a percent lower than my model. I don’t like not knowing why.”

  Bryce smiled. “Need to dump more yeast onto your fruit. Makes great gobs of CO2 then. You’re drinking it.”

  He stopped with his glass half-raised. “But the fungi check out. They’re healthy…though their population is… I don’t know. Do you have a commpad?”

  The bartender reached under his counter and pulled out a stack of them. “People are always leaving them.”

  “One is enough.” Jaron took one off the top, thumbed in, and called up the stats on fungi biomass over the last year. They were nowhere near extinction, so he hadn’t noticed their decline.

  “But why are they declining?”

  Bryce tapped his beer mug with one finger. “We’re an efficient culture. No longer any fruit lying around to sugar up the soil.”

  A wave of relief ran through him. “That’s it! No planned wastage, just the cutoff from the trail clearing. In the wild, there is no need to plan it, but we humans have interrupted the natural decomposition process. I saw the cutoff and paid no further attention.” He held out his hand to Bryce. His shake was solid, like a man who worked with his hands rather than tending a bar.