by H. A. Swain
“Now, listen carefully,” she says. “Go out back to the tilapia tank and kill two fish. Then bring me the skin for his leg. We’ll fry up the meat for dinner.”
Uma looks at me, bewildered. I beckon for her to follow me outside. “My mother might sound a little strange, but she knows what she’s doing.”
“If you say so,” Uma says.
Out back, by the three aquatic tanks, old swimming pools half buried in the ground inside locked, reinforced cages, I grab a net. “This one is filled with mussels,” I explain, pointing to this first one. “This one has different types of seaweed, and this one is full of fish.” I point down at the dozen circling tilapia. They take turns popping their heads out of the water, mouths opening and closing in anticipation of a feeding.
“But why…” Uma starts to ask.
“Shhhh,” I tell her as I concentrate. As soon as my shadow looms over the tank with the net, the fish dive deep and swim faster. “They’re wriggly little buggers,” I whisper. “You have to anticipate where they’ll go if you want to catch them.”
I watch the fish, zeroing in on two swimming side by side in a figure eight pattern. I let the tension in my body go so I’m nice and relaxed as I drop my shoulders and lift my sternum. I imagine that I am the fish, then I dip my net just ahead of where they’re going. I snag both fish with one quick flick and pull them up dripping and writhing.
“Whoa!” says Uma, impressed, until I slam them on the chopping block and bash their heads in with a hammer. Uma gasps and hides her eyes.
“Sorry,” I say. “Did that scare you?” I take a sharp knife from my mother’s tool cabinet above the chopping block. I scrape away the scales, then quickly gut the fish like I was taught when I was seven.
“I’ve never seen an animal killed before,” she says, peeking out at me.
“But you eat meat, right?”
“Sort of. I guess. I mean, some kind of processed patties. Probably grown in a lab somewhere.”
“This will taste ten times better, I guarantee.” I flay them and remove the skin, which I lay across a clean metal plate. “Take this to my mother, please.”
I chuckle as I watch Uma carry the plate away from her body as if the skin might come back to life and grab her. Then I get back to filleting the meat for our dinner.
When I join them in the greenhouse again, Quasar is lying contentedly as Mom finishes wrapping his leg in fish skin, making him look part reptilian.
“Tilapia is disease resistant, and the collagen will help regrow his skin while keeping infection out,” Mom explains to Uma. “But whatever you used on him saved his leg. The muscle bands are reattached and healing, and the fractured bone has already fused. It’s amazing.”
Uma looks slightly embarrassed. “Well, you know those people up on MUSC probably have medicine that’s light-years ahead of what’s down here.”
“MUSC?” Mom rears back with revulsion. “Were you at the MUSC Dump?”
“I had a job to do,” I say defensively. My mother looks betrayed. “Someone hired me to go there and pick up something important. I didn’t have a choice.”
“One always has a choice,” my mother says, and turns away to wash up.
My face burns, and I tremble. I almost blurt out that I did it to save Castor, but I keep my mouth shut. There’s no use causing more drama, especially in front of Uma. Instead I lean down and kiss the white star on Quasar’s forehead, which calms me enough that I can let it go.
* * *
After a dinner of fried tilapia, nopales, greens, and cherries, Uma and I lie tangled on an old springy mattress surrounded by rosebushes in my mother’s garden.
“A literal bed of roses,” Uma says, delighted.
“My mother can never pass up a pun,” I say.
One of my long legs is wrapped around her strong, compact calf. Her right arm rests behind my neck. We hold hands, fingers laced together and resting on our hip bones. Overhead, stars speckle the night sky like scattered quartz, but the Moon is still hidden behind the mountain.
“Is it true that when you look at a star, you’re seeing light that’s no longer there?” I ask.
“Theoretically, yes,” says Uma.
“So we’re actually seeing into the past when we look up?”
“Sort of,” she says. “See, light travels at about three hundred thousand meters per second so if you think about stars that are really far away, like the Eagle Nebula, it takes seven thousand years for that light to reach us on Earth. Theoretically, stars in that nebula could have died before the light gets to us, so what we see is the light that started out seven thousand years ago but just got here now.”
“Wow,” I say, still staring up. “If that’s true, then there could be a new star whose light hasn’t reached us yet.”
“That’s right.”
“Like us,” I say dreamily.
Uma lifts her head to look at me. “Huh?”
“I mean, sometimes I feel like a star that’s been beaming my light out into the universe for a long, long time, only nobody has ever seen me—until now.” I squeeze her hand.
“Awww,” Uma coos. “That’s so sweet! I love how you see the stars as something beautiful to be contemplated, not as utilitarian objects for fuel and exploration. So many people look up and see the planets as places to be conquered.”
“Who says I’m not going to conquer you, Ursa Major?” I grab her wrist and roll over so I’m on top of her. “I’ve been dying to kiss you again.”
She smiles up at me and lifts her face to mine. “Go ahead.”
We kiss like we did in the Dumps, only this time her mouth tastes of mint and honey from my mother’s sun tea and her skin smells like lavender and sage from my mother’s soap. When we pull apart, my lips pulse in time with my beating heart.
I roll onto my back next to her, warm and buzzing with happiness. “Show me our constellation again.”
Uma lifts my arm so we’re both pointing at the sky.
“First, you find the Big Dipper.”
“I see it!”
“Follow the line of stars down the handle.” We trace the arc as she says each name. “Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth.” Then around the bottom of the dipper. “Megrez, Phecda, Merak. Straight down from Merak on the front paw of the bear. There!” She jabs my finger in the air. “Iota UMa. My Talitha.”
“I’ve always been a part of your constellation.”
“Yes,” she says, and we kiss again. “You are my sidereal time.”
“Your what?” I say with a laugh.
“Remember, the clock in the Observatory?” She props herself up on one elbow to face me. “You are my star. My point of reference.”
“That’s so…” I try to find the right word.
“Dorkbottish?” she says, cringing a little.
“Yes,” I say, and laugh. “But also incredibly sweet.” I bring her knuckles to my lips.
She smiles big. “Did you know that in a vacuum, light from a star could travel forever?”
I shake my head.
“It’s true!” Uma lies back again and stares up at the sky. “Right now, I feel like Calliope is our vacuum, where your starlight and mine could go on and on, side by side, without interruption to the end of time.”
“How do you know so much?” I ask.
“Well,” says Uma. She pauses to take a deep breath. “Remember how I told you that my family moved when I was young?”
I nod.
“We actually started out someplace near here, I think.”
“No way!”
“I don’t know exactly where we lived, but it was somewhere in the Wastelands. A place that used to be called Hesperia, I think. The few pix and memories I have looked a lot like this area.”
“I wonder if we ever saw each other.” I try to imagine my filthy toddler self, running wild with Castor, passing by a tiny, perfect, curly-headed Uma.
“Maybe.” She chuckles. “Do you think we waved at each other?”
“I p
robably threw trash at you,” I say. “I was kind of a hellion.”
Uma laughs. “I bet you were adorable.”
“If you like filthy little guttersnipes.”
“I do!” she says, and pecks me on the cheek.
“Why’d your family leave?” I roll over to face her, but she keeps her eyes focused on the starry sky.
“My parents wanted more for me. An education, mostly.”
“Yeah, good luck getting one of those out here! So where’d you go?” I snuggle closer, laying my head in the soft spot beneath her shoulder.
“Well…” she says. “I’ve been wanting to tell you that—”
The back door of the house squeaks open, and Mom marches out, calling my name while holding Castor’s red knapsack in her hands. “Something in here is beeping.” Mom shoves the bag at me.
I heave myself up and sigh at my mom. She has the timing of Aurelia. I dig through the knapsack, past the Kinematic Jumpsuit, the razor, the Wearables, Castor’s jacket, one of his old hats, and the canister of goo. At the bottom of the bag, I uncover my device, which beeps and blinks furiously. Thinking it might be Castor, I hop up and strap it on my head, but the image on my Lenz is fuzzy.
“Castor? That you?”
The audio is too distorted to hear properly.
“Wait, hang on, let me get better reception.” I look over my shoulder at Uma, sitting up, hugging her knees. “I’ll be right back!” I call to her, then I jog up the bluff behind my mom’s place to find a stronger signal. At the top, the static clears, and I see Mundie, hunched in the curve of a kidney-bean-shaped table. Behind him is a white wall painted with bright green leaves. Seeing him makes my stomach squeeze, and every ounce of relaxation and happiness I felt in the last hour with Uma flies away.
“Where the hell are you?” he barks. “Why didn’t you bring us the goo?”
“I got the stuff, but I ran into a problem,” I explain as I pick my way down the bluff toward Uma. “I’ll bring it first thing in the morning. What’s the rush, anyway?”
“You’re the one who was in such a hurry to get your brother back. Or are you having too much fun with your little girlfriend to worry about Castor anymore?”
“Listen, Mundie!” Now that I have the goo and I know Castor will be safe, I don’t have to be so nice to Mundie anymore. “I’m really sick of—” But then D’Cart enters the frame of my Glaz in a flutter of salmon-colored gossamer. I skid to a stop, sending tiny pebbles rolling down the steep hill.
“Hello, Talitha,” she says.
I stand dumbfounded for a moment before I can say hello, my voice too high and squeaky. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it back yet. I had a problem and then it was too late to head back, but I have the stuff, and I’m coming first thing in the morning.”
“How lovely,” she purrs. She leans forward and rests her elbows on the table, making a tent with her fingers in front of her face. “And I hear from Mundie that you’ve met the MUSC runaway.”
I scowl at him. “I never said that. I went to Lost Feelies and Soggywood. I talked to a couple of Moonlings at a nightclub but I didn’t learn anything—”
“She’s talking about the girl who was at your house last night,” Mundie says.
“No,” I say slowly, angry that Mundie can’t let the Uma thing go. “She’s from Merica.”
“No,” he says even slower and haughtier. “That girl ran away from MUSC. She’s the one you’re looking for.”
I shake my head. “You must have confused her with someone else. You saw her, Mundie. She’s not a Moonling.”
From the shadows on the bluff, I look down at Uma waiting for me in our bed of roses. In that moment, I wish more than anything that a door between two simultaneous realities would open and Uma and I could step through into a different version of the universe where we have a little house in our own small starlit vacuum.
“She’s definitely from Earth,” I add defiantly. But even as I say this, something niggles at me. The strange silver clothing, no device, a family that moved from here to get a better life, all the things she knows about MUSC and the Moon and the stars.
“Is this her?” D’Cart sends a feed to my Glaz. A holo of Uma stares at me from some other time and place. It’s definitely her. Same corkscrew curls, same gold-flecked green eyes. The only difference is the slight look of sadness on her face instead of her happy, eager smile. UMA JEMISON, AGE 16, scrolls beneath her image.
“That’s her,” says Mundie. “That’s the girl I met at your house. She’s lying if she told you she’s from Merica.”
“I’m not surprised.” D’Cart sniffs. “MUSCies can’t be trusted. Never could. They’re an immoral lot.”
“But … but … but … she can’t be one of them,” I say.
“She was born on Earth. In the Wastelands, in fact,” says D’Cart. “A place called Hesperia. She won a scholarship to MUSC as a child.”
I can’t talk. Can’t move. I feel like I’m being sucked into another gaping hole, about to be buried beneath a heap of garbage.
“Since we know who she is and you’ve already befriended her, now all you have to do is bring her in,” says D’Cart, as if this should be easy.
“No,” I say. “Mundie told me if I bring you the goo, you’ll let Castor go.”
“Well…” D’Cart thinks this over. “Mundie was wrong and the situation has changed. Now, I want the girl and the goo.”
“You can’t just change our agreement,” I insist.
“Yes, I can,” D’Cart says simply.
“Do you know where she is?” Mundie asks.
I open my mouth to answer, then close it again. I work to put the puzzle pieces together. Why didn’t Uma tell me where she’s from and why she ran away? What’s she running from? Is that why she left the club when the other MUSCies showed up? Are her feelings for me real, or am I simply a convenient way to get around without being caught? Anger builds in me as the questions mount.
“Well,” says Mundie, impatient as a hungry snake. “Do you know where she is?”
I swallow hard. My mother’s words echo back to me: Whatever they want, there will be more in it for them than there is for you.
“I don’t know where she is,” I manage to say.
“That’s too bad.” D’Cart shifts. “I thought this might be easy.” She leans back but keeps her eyes trained steadily on me.
“I can bring you the goo first thing tomorrow,” I say again. “And if you release Castor, we can look for the Moon girl together. With both of us looking—”
“Nice try,” says D’Cart. “But that’s not going to happen.”
“But, but, but … what if I can’t find her?” I ask. My eyes sting, and my throat feels as if it’s going to slam shut.
“Then Castor will be on the Shuttle in her place,” says Mundie.
“What?” I say.
“Not exactly in her place,” D’Cart says with an odd little laugh. “ExploroBots travel differently than MUSCies, you know.”
“ExploroBots?” I bark. “What are you talking about?”
“Talitha, wake up!” Mundie says, and snaps his fingers at my face. “If you don’t bring the goo and the girl, D’Cart will sell Castor off as an ExploroBot and send him to the Moon.”
I feel the blood draining from my face. Stars swim in the dark sky above. I have to squat to keep my balance. “This makes no sense!” I say, breathy and confused. “You said you hated the ExploroBot program. You said it’s wrong and immoral!” I nearly shout at D’Cart, then lower my voice, since sound carries out here. “You said you wanted the ExploroBot program to end.”
“That’s true,” says D’Cart. “The ExploroBot program is a travesty. A gross misuse of excellent technology. But I need a person on the next MUSC Shuttle. So it can either be your brother with the ExploroBots or the Moonling who’s going back anyway once they find her.”
“But, why?” I ask, my heart breaking at the thought of choosing between my brother and a girl I fell
in love with yesterday.
“I have some unfinished business with MUSC,” D’Cart says.
“You’re putting me in a difficult position,” I tell her.
“No,” she says firmly as she rises and walks away. Then she turns and says over her shoulder, “I’m giving you the chance to save your brother.”
“How could you be a part of this?” I hiss at Mundie as D’Cart leaves the room. “You said you would take care of him.”
“I’m trying to help you get Castor back!” Mundie says to me.
“No,” I say. “You’re trying to keep me apart from Uma!” Then I disconnect.
* * *
I stay up on the bluff, slumped against a rock, knees up to my chest, head buried under my arms, for at least an hour, trying to figure out what to do. Overhead Ursa Major sweeps slowly across the sky, with Talitha eternally locked on the big bear’s paw. Or am I under her thumb? Uma said I was her point of reference. Her constant in the universe. Sidereal time, my ass! She’s been using me to get around.
Part of me wants to spring down the bluff and confront her. Tell her that I know the truth about her and demand to know why she lied to me. But I can’t. Because if I do, she might take off, and then I’ll lose my chance to get my brother back. I could never live with myself or face my mother again if Castor died in the same way as my father.
But I can’t face Uma now. I won’t be able to look her in the eye. She trusts me. Thinks we’re on the same side. And I have to keep it that way until I take her in. Because as D’Cart said, the situation has changed.
I hear someone crunching up the path, and I scramble to disappear into the shadow of the boulder until my mother whispers, “Talitha, are you okay? Was that Castor on your device? You’ve been gone for over an hour. Where are you, girl?”
“Here I am.” I step out.
“Why didn’t you come back?” She reaches to push my hair behind my ear.
“Just watching the stars,” I lie, and look away so she can’t read my face.
“You can see so many more out here than in the city, I bet.” Mom settles herself against the rock. I slide down to sit beside her but keep my eyes on the ground.