by H. A. Swain
“Just as long as it’s not me?” He drags me out the door, where a SecuriBot waits.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask, because there’s no use arguing with Mundie about Talitha. He’s going to think what he wants to think.
“D’Cart wants to see you again. Don’t ask me why. I think she should let you rot.”
I follow him to the elevator, and the bot follows me. Being out of that small room is a huge relief. Of course, the first thing I do is look for ways to escape, but there are none this high up in the Palace.
Inside the elevator, Mundie slouches against the wall. “I’ve done everything to show Talitha how I feel,” he complains. The doors close. “Upper lab,” he says, and we ascend toward a higher floor. “You guys were my best friends in the Dumps when we were kids.”
You just followed us everywhere, I think. While Mundie carps on about Talitha, I try to make a plan. Could I shove him out of the elevator when the doors open, then command it to the lobby? What about the SecuriBot?
“I came to AlphaZonia because she was here. I got a legit job so I could stay,” he says.
Or maybe I could step out with both of them, then dart back in before the doors close again?
“I show up at your house! I bring her presents!”
No. They’d have security waiting for me at the bottom.
“I even talked D’Cart into letting her go when you guys got caught!” Mundie says. “And I offered to help her, but all she wanted me to do was keep you safe.”
“So why don’t you?” I say.
“I haven’t beaten the crap out of you—that’s something,” he says.
The elevator stops, and we exit into the most amazing laboratory I’ve ever seen. I shake off Mundie’s threat as I gape at the white walls lined with holos of design plans for all kinds of crazy contraptions. Behind a long bank of windows, assembly lines of 3-D printers and robots crank out products. D’Cart claims she invents everything she sells, and after seeing this, I believe her.
“This place is incredible,” I whisper, but Mundie’s not listening to me.
“The Yoobies don’t like me because I’m not one of them,” he whines as we walk through the lab. “The only thing I have in common with the stupid Yoobies is the TFT chip inside my head.” He bangs a finger against the side of his skull. “And Talitha just ignores me. You hate my guts. I’m barely above this SecuriBot.” He reaches back and slaps at the faceless machine beside me.
“Listen.” I sidle up to him when we pause outside a closed door at the far end of the lab. “When I get out of here, you and Talitha and I should find a way to work together. Maybe we could even find a house…”
Mundie looks at me. “Shut up, Castor.”
“Jeez, Mundie, I’m trying to be nice and—”
“I’m not an idiot,” he says. Then he opens the door and shoves me inside the room.
I trip, head down, arms out, and land against a desk. I look up to see D’Cart blinking at me from the other side. But she looks different. The over-the-top hair and makeup are gone. No froofy pink clothes. Her face is scrubbed clean, her hair is pulled back tight, and she’s wearing a white lab coat.
“You make quite an entrance,” she says.
I straighten myself up. “Mundie pushed me.”
“Boys…” she says, but trails off.
Behind her is a life-size hologram of a girl about my age, with dark curls and a wide smile in a MUSC-issued uniform.
“Why am I here?” I ask.
UMA JEMISON, AGE 16, scrolls beneath the hologram girl’s face.
“Good news,” D’Cart says with a smile. “Looks like we found the Moonling.”
UMA JEMISON
WASTELANDS, EARTH
I HOLD QUASAR on my lap on the drive to Talitha’s mother’s house. I duck down when we pass a line of automated blue trucks with the MUSC logo on the side.
“Just in time,” she says, and draws in a ragged breath.
Quasar is so exhausted by the pain that he sleeps fitfully, whimpering now and again, as I watch out the window with fascination. The landscape feels oddly familiar to me, and I wonder if my parents lived near here when I was small.
“Is this where you grew up?” I ask.
“Sort of,” Talitha says. “Before my dad died, we lived in Palmdale, which operates more or less like a town, or tries to, anyway. They siphon water from the lakes up in the mountains, set up solar panels for power, barter for fresh food with farmers, and try to run a school. But after my dad was gone, Mom moved us out here. She thought leaving would be the answer to all her problems, but really she just traded one set of troubles for another.”
“I know that kind of trade-off,” I mutter.
At an old water tower with the word Palmdale in faded blue, Talitha turns right, onto a long, dusty road. After a few minutes of riding in silence, we pass beneath an archway constructed of chicken wire, old fence posts, car parts, blank screens, pipes, tubes, wire coils, and a thousand other things that I can’t name. We pass a sign made from a cacophony of spinning, shiny found objects.
“‘Calliope,’” I read. “Is that the name of this town?”
“Town?” says Talitha with a laugh. “It’s more of a conglomerate of people who don’t like to follow rules.”
Since the sun is directly overhead, the heat has become intense, and only a few people are out. Slowly, our Pod creeps past the oddballs on their strange patchwork bikes—the favored mode of transport here, except for the one guy who walks by on stilts. A thick film of dust swirls around the Pod, turning the windows nearly opaque. I can see just enough to make out the giant word sculptures welded from discarded objects that line either side of the main road. I read them aloud, “LOVE. TOLERANCE. ACCEPTANCE.”
“Yeah, well,” says Talitha, eyebrows up, “That’s a nice message, but it ain’t all you need!”
Quasar perks up and gives a weak bark as if in agreement. Outside, a pack of dogs lift their heads from where they lie inside a half-buried sea-foam-green convertible car sticking up from the sand.
“He knows we’re home,” says Talitha.
“That’s a good sign.” I pat him on the head.
At the end of the road, we skirt around concentric circles of shacks surrounding some kind of yurt covered with wind chimes and shiny spinning sun catchers.
“That’s the ayahuasca temple,” says Talitha.
“Is that the name of their god?” I ask.
Talitha laughs. “Sort of. I mean lots of people out here worship it, but it’s a drug, not a god. People make a tea from a plant that they think allows them to communicate with nature.”
“Does it?”
“Who knows?” she says. “But I’d never do it, even if it did. The people drink the tea, then shake and sweat and vomit and shit themselves in the process.”
“Willingly?” I ask, trying to imagine why anyone would put themselves through such torture.
“Yep.”
“Does your mom do that?”
Talitha shakes her head as we pass by the colorful houses radiating from the temple. “I think she probably used to, but not anymore. Now she grows and sells the plants they use to make the stuff.”
We keep driving, all the way to the outskirts of the orderly shacks to yet another dusty path. Out here, even the voice commands won’t work in the Pod, so Talitha physically handles the steering wheel and pushes the pedals with her feet. She turns left at a boulder painted with a giant lizard. We pass a smattering of old campers, gutted buses, and makeshift yurts.
“Does she live here?” I ask.
“No way,” she tells me with a grin. “That would be far too mainstream for her.”
A few more minutes, and we turn down the last road, nothing more than a shallow depression in the compacted sand. Up ahead, in the wavy lines of heat rising from the dust, I see a sparkling shelter.
“This is where my mother lives,” Talitha announces.
She parks in a clearing in front of her
mother’s “house”—three enormous shipping crates, one blue, one yellow, and one red, stacked then welded together into an asymmetrical living space. The yellow sits atop the blue, and the red one is turned up on its side like a tower. There’s a small porch tacked onto the front with the only blooming bougainvillea bush for miles. The walls are covered in a beautiful sparkling mosaic made from broken glass and flattened metal and tiny motherboards from long-dead machines.
I climb out of the pod with Quasar in my arms. “It’s so gorgeous and lush!” I say, pointing to the succulents and flowers growing around the edges of a saguaro cactus fence—prickly sentries standing guard. “How does she grow this stuff?”
“Castor,” says Talitha, admiring the space. “He diverted water from a lake up there.” She points to the bluff behind her mother’s place. “Don’t ask me how. Out back, there’s a recycled water greenhouse where she grows fruits and vegetables for herself and the ayahuasca plants that she sells or trades for other goods.”
With Quasar squirming in my arms, I follow Talitha to the front door.
“Locked,” she says, annoyed. We walk around to the back and find it locked as well. “My mom likes to say everyone in Calliope is well-intentioned and honest, but she’s no fool. She knows there are as many thieves, cheats, and liars here as anywhere else.”
“Did you let her know we’re coming?”
She laughs. “My mother doesn’t believe in using a communication device.”
My eyes bug out.
“I know. Weird. But I’ll bet you anything she’ll claim she felt our presence when we see her.”
I blink at her, not knowing what to say.
“She thinks she has a sixth sense. That she’s tapped into the universe in a way that’s unexplainable by science.” Talitha rolls her eyes, but I’m fascinated. “If you haven’t realized yet, my mom’s a little kooky.”
“From the looks of this place, I’d say she’s amazing.”
“She’s going to love you!” Talitha says with a snort as she takes Quasar from my arms.
In the garden behind the house, Talitha lays the poor pup on a soft braided rug beneath a colorful swinging hammock rigged up between a fan palm and a big metal post. Next to it is a stack of tires made into a chair. She goes around to the greenhouse and returns with water for all of us and a handful of sticky dates to eat.
I devour the fruit, spitting the pits into my palm. Talitha stretches her arms overhead and says, “Do you want to have the first shower?”
“Shower?” I say, my mouth agape. “What kind of shower?”
“A real one,” she tells me. “None of that ionized cleaning spray out here. Just pure, clean, stolen water.”
* * *
Inside the small shower stall behind Talitha’s mother’s house, the rush of real water over my head is one of the most glorious things I’ve felt in years. Well, besides my feelings for Talitha! Being with her, I’m free and happy in a way I’ve never been. On MUSC, I constantly worry what people think. How they judge me for being a Zero Gen and whether I’m setting a good example so Second and Third Gens know that people from Earth are just as capable as anybody else. But here on Earth, with Talitha, I don’t have to think about any of that.
I close my eyes and tilt my head back so the water rushes over my face. I can almost imagine that I’m diving into the ocean, just like in my swimming dreams. The water spills over my forehead and cheeks, down my shoulders to form rivulets that cascade over the naked skin of my belly. My skin drinks it in. My hair absorbs the moisture like a desiccated sponge. I feel like a dormant desert plant coming back to life in a sudden rain. I think of that weird ReBirth Spa we saw last night, water baptisms by religious sects, the sodalite truth Gem Water Talitha gave me, and this oasis in the desert. Water is a purifier, and it’s time that I come clean. Today I will tell Talitha who I am.
I find fresh clothes (a soft yellow shirt and cotton shorts) warming on a rock outside the small shower. I dress, then find Talitha waiting for me in the hammock. She has wet hair and is wearing clean clothes, as well.
“Want to join me?” she asks.
My heart zings, and my skin prickles at the thought of being next to her, but I try to play it down. “Is there room?”
“There’s plenty of space!” She wriggles over.
The hammock wobbles precariously as I climb in. Talitha laughs and clings to the webbing like a trapped bug. We rock and nearly tip over the opposite way.
“Whoa! Whoa! Wait!” Talitha says, both of us giggling. I adjust my body, and we tilt the other way. Her body rolls into mine. I could keep jostling like this, bumping up against her all day. But finally, we settle. Lying side by side, no dog in between us. This time our shoulders, elbows, and knees are pressed together.
“This is nice,” she says, and reaches for my hand. We intertwine our fingers. I wish my hand was less sweaty and that my heartbeat wasn’t so loud.
“Yes,” I croak. “It’s glorious.” I gaze up through the palm frond canopy overhead at the bright blue sky.
“Talitha,” I whisper a few minutes later when I build up my courage to tell her where I’m from and what I’m doing here. I turn to face her, ready to tell her everything, but her eyes are closed and her breathing is even. “Are you asleep?” I whisper.
She doesn’t respond, and I don’t have the heart to wake her. She looks so peaceful, and beautiful, asleep in the dappled sun. There’s time. I can tell her later. For now, I lean over and kiss her gently on the forehead. Then I lie back and close my eyes as the heat of the day, the warmth of Talitha beside me, and the gentle rocking of the hammock lull me off to sleep.
TALITHA NEVA
CALLIOPE, EARTH
HOURS LATER, I wake to the unmistakable sound of my mother’s buzzing motorbike. I sit up, rocking the hammock where Uma sleeps beside me. She opens her eyes, startled, and cries, “Are we landing?”
I look at her and laugh. “You okay?”
“Oh, gad,” she says, clutching the edge of the hammock with one hand and my thigh with the other. “I didn’t know where I was just then.”
“Calliope,” I remind her. “My mother’s house.”
“Right,” she says, then sighs. “The best place on Earth.”
“Wow,” I tell her with a chuckle. “My mother will be honored that you think so.” I sling my legs over the hammock edge and offer Uma my hand as I say, “And here she comes now.”
Together, we walk to the front of the house. In the distance, I spot a wavering image coming down the road—a fat-tired, rainbow-colored motorcycle shimmering in the early evening sun. I wave my arms overhead. My mother stops, puts one foot on the ground, lifts her sand goggles, and shades her eyes to see.
“Mom!” I shout, hands cupped around my mouth. “Hey, Mom! It’s Talitha!”
My mother whoops and gets back on the bike to blitz toward us with a sand trail swirling in the air behind her. She arrives looking how she always does: bikini top, many-pocketed shorts, and worn boots. She steps off the bike, pushes her thick-rimmed black goggles to the top of her head wrapped in colored silks, and reaches for me.
“Talitha, darling girl child!” She pulls me close. For a moment I am soothed by her smell—desert sage and lavender. The comfort of her hug, like everything else about her, makes no sense. For someone so thin and bony, her embrace is always warm and soft. “I knew you were coming.”
I glance over my shoulder and wink at Uma, who stands shyly by the bougainvillea bush. “No, you didn’t, Mom.” I start to pull away, but she squeezes me tighter.
“Last night I dreamed of Hala Bashi, the red-haired Uighur warrior,” she tells me.
“Mom,” I say. “We aren’t Uighurs and I’m not a warrior.”
“But you are my fierce red-haired girl, so it was a sign.” She buries her fingers in my damp hair to massage my scalp, which makes it impossible to stay annoyed with her. “Is Castor with you?”
I shake my head.
“Oh,” she says
, clearly disappointed, but not surprised. Castor rarely comes to visit, and I offer no other explanation because I don’t want to worry her. Not yet.
Then Mom notices Uma. “And who’s this?”
“Don’t you know?” I ask, because I can’t help baiting her sometimes. “I thought you dreamed of us?”
“Hmph,” my mother says. “Talitha is no fun. But you!” She walks toward Uma with her arms wide open. “I can tell that you are someone special who came from far, far away. I’m Rhea. What’s your name?”
“I’m Uma. Nice to meet you.” Uma holds out her hand like a regular human being, but my mom chooses to hug her anyway. Way too tight. I half bury my face in my shoulder as I laugh at Uma stiff in my mother’s arms.
“Mom.” I lay my hand on my mother’s back. “We need your help.”
She lets go of poor Uma and turns to me. “Why? What’s happened?”
“Quasar,” I tell her. “He’s hurt.”
We hurry to the back garden and find our pup on his side panting beneath the hammock.
“Oh, dear!” Mom drops down on all fours and crawls toward him, head bowed as if in submission. “Beloved totem creature. Who did this to you?”
“WRMS,” I tell her. “Uma saved him.”
“No, well, I…” Uma blushes and brushes away my compliment.
“He was stuck in something nasty.”
Quasar growls halfheartedly at my mother as she unwraps the bandages. “Where are these from?” Mom asks.
“We found them in the Dump,” Uma explains. “They’re expired, but they were still sealed and sterile.”
“Are there more?” Mom asks. We shake our heads. “You did well.” Mom strokes Quasar’s head as she coos into his ear. “And I have just the thing to patch this pup right up!” She scoops him into her arms. Quasar trusts her so implicitly that he doesn’t make a sound. Just licks her nose in a friendly greeting.
Inside the greenhouse, moist with humidity, my mother lays Quasar on a clean metal table and begins gathering up leaves from various plants surrounding us.