Echea

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Echea

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Echea

  This story first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 1998. Nominated for Best Novelette.

  I can close my eyes and she appears in my mind as she did the moment I first saw her: tiny, fragile, with unnaturally pale skin and slanted chocolate eyes. Her hair was white as the moon on a cloudless evening. It seemed, that day, that her eyes were the only spot of color on her haggard little face. She was seven, but she looked three.

  And she acted like nothing we had ever encountered before.

  Or since.

  We had three children and a good life. We were not impulsive, but we did feel as if we had something to give. Our home was large, and we had money; any child would benefit from that.

  It seemed to be for the best.

  It all started with the brochures. We saw them first at an outdoor cafe near our home. We were having lunch when we glimpsed floating dots of color, a fleeting child’s face. Both my husband and I touched them only to have the displays open before us:

  The blank vista of the Moon, the Earth over the horizon like a giant blue and white ball, a looming presence, pristine and healthy and somehow guilt-ridden. The Moon itself looked barren, as it always had, until one focused. And then one saw the pockmarks, the shattered dome open to the stars. In the corner of the first brochure I opened, at the very edge of the reproduction, were blood-splotches. They were scattered on the craters and boulders, and had left fist-sized holes in the dust. I didn’t need to be told what had caused it. We saw the effects of high velocity rifles in low gravity every time we downloaded the news.

  The brochures began with the Moon, and ended with the faces of refugees: pallid, worn, defeated. The passenger shuttles to Earth had pretty much stopped. At first, those who could pay came here, but by the time we got our brochures, Earth passage had changed. Only those with living relatives were able to return. Living relatives who were willing to acknowledge the relationship-and had official hard copy to prove it.

  The rules were waived in the case of children, of orphans and of underage war refuges. They were allowed to come to Earth if their bodies could tolerate it, if they were willing to be adopted, and if they were willing to renounce any claims they had to Moon land.

  They had to renounce the stars in order to have a home.

  We picked her up in Sioux Falls, the nearest star shuttle stop and detention center to our home. The shuttle stop was a desolate place. It was designed as an embarkation point for political prisoners and for star soldiers. It was built on the rolling prairie, a sprawling complex with laser fences shimmering in the sunlight. Guards stood at every entrance, and several hovered above. We were led, by men with laser rifles, into the main compound, a building finished almost a century before, made of concrete and steel, functional, cold, and ancient. Its halls smelled musty. The concrete flaked, covering everything with a fine gray dust.

  Echea had flown in on a previous shuttle. She had been in detox and sick bay; through psychiatric exams and physical screenings. We did not know we would get her until they called our name.

  We met her in a concrete room with no windows, shielded against the sun, shielded against the world. The area had no furniture.

  A door opened and a child appeared.

  Tiny, pale, fragile. Eyes as big as the moon itself, and darker than the blackest night. She stood in the center of the room, legs spread, arms crossed, as if she were already angry at us.

  Around us, through us, between us, a computer voice resonated:

  This is Echea. She is yours. Please take her, and proceed through the doors to your left. The waiting shuttle will take you to your preassigned destination.

  She didn’t move when she heard the voice, although I started. My husband had already gone toward her. He crouched and she glowered at him.

  "I don’t need you," she said.

  "We don’t need you either," he said. "But we want you."

  The hard set to her chin eased, just a bit. "Do you speak for her?" she asked, indicating me.

  "No," I said. I knew what she wanted. She wanted reassurance early that she wouldn’t be entering a private war zone as difficult and devastating as the one she left. "I speak for myself. I’d like it if you came home with us, Echea."

  She stared at us both then, not relinquishing power, not changing that forceful stance. "Why do you want me?" she asked. "You don’t even know me."

  "But we will," my husband said.

  "And then you’ll send me back," she said, her tone bitter. I heard the fear in it.

  "You won’t go back," I said. "I promise you that."

  It was an easy promise to make. None of the children, even if their adoptions did not work, returned to the Moon.

  A bell sounded overhead. They had warned us about this, warned us that we would have to move when we heard it.

  "It’s time to leave," my husband said. "Get your things."

  Her first look was shock and betrayal, quickly masked. I wasn’t even sure I had seen it. And then she narrowed those lovely chocolate eyes. "I’m from the Moon," she said with a sarcasm that was foreign to our natural daughters. "We have no things."

  What we knew of the Moon Wars on Earth was fairly slim. The news vids were necessarily vague, and I had never had the patience for a long lesson in Moon history.

  The shorthand for the Moon situation was this: the Moon’s economic resources were scarce. Some colonies, after several years of existence, were self-sufficient. Others were not. The shipments from Earth, highly valuable, were designated to specific places and often did not get there. Piracy, theft, and murder occurred to gain the scarce resources. Sometimes skirmishes broke out. A few times, the fighting escalated. Domes were damaged, and in the worst of the fighting, two colonies were destroyed.

  At the time, I did not understand the situation at all. I took at face value a cynical comment from one of my professors: colonies always struggle for dominance when they are away from the mother country. I had even repeated it at parties.

  I had not understood that it oversimplified one of the most complex situations in our universe.

  I also had not understood the very human cost of such events.

  That is, until I had Echea.

  ***

  We had ordered a private shuttle for our return, but it wouldn’t have mattered if we were walking down a public street. I attempted to engage Echea, but she wouldn’t talk. She stared out the window instead, and became visibly agitated as we approached home.

  Lake Nebagamon is a small lake, one of the hundreds that dot northern Wisconsin. It was a popular resort for people from nearby Superior. Many had summer homes, some dating from the late 1800s. In the early 2000s, the summer homes were sold off. Most lots were bought by families who already owned land there, and hated the crowding at Nebagamon. My family bought fifteen lots. My husband’s bought ten. Our marriage, some joked, was one of the most important local mergers of the day.

  Sometimes I think that it was no joke. It was expected. There is affection between us, of course, and a certain warmth. But no real passion.

  The passion I once shared with another man-a boy actually-was so long ago that I remember it in images, like a vid seen decades ago, or a painting made from someone else’s life.

  When my husband and I married, we acted like an acquiring conglomerate. We tore down my family’s summer home because it had no potential or historical value, and we built onto my husband’s. The ancient house became an estate with a grand lawn that rolled down to the muddy water. Evenings we sat on the verandah and listened to the cicadas until full dark. Then we stared at the stars and their reflections in our lake. Sometimes we were blessed with the northern ligh
ts, but not too often.

  This is the place we brought Echea. A girl who had never really seen green grass or tall trees; who had definitely never seen lakes or blue sky or Earth’s stars. She had, in her brief time in North Dakota, seen what they considered Earth-the brown dust, the fresh air. But her exposure had been limited, and had not really included sunshine or nature itself.

  We did not really know how this would affect her.

  There were many things we did not know.

  Our girls were lined up on the porch in age order: Kally, the twelve-year-old, and the tallest, stood near the door. Susan, the middle child, stood next to her, and Anne stood by herself near the porch. They were properly stair-stepped, three years between them, a separation considered optimal for more than a century now. We had followed the rules in birthing them, as well as in raising them.

  Echea was the only thing out of the norm.

  Anne, the courageous one, approached us as we got off the shuttle. She was small for six, but still bigger than Echea. Anne also blended our heritages perfectly-my husband’s bright blue eyes and light hair with my dark skin and exotic features. She would be our beauty some day, something my husband claimed was unfair, since she also had the brains.

  "Hi," she said, standing in the middle of the lawn. She wasn’t looking at us. She was looking at Echea.

  Echea stopped walking. She had been slightly ahead of me. By stopping, she forced me to stop too.

  "I’m not like them," she said. She was glaring at my daughters. "I don’t want to be."

  "You don’t have to be," I said softly.

  "But you can be civil," my husband said.

  Echea frowned at him, and in that moment, I think, their relationship was defined.

  "I suppose you’re the pampered baby," she said to Anne.

  Anne grinned.

  "That’s right," she said. "I like it better than being the spoiled brat."

  I held my breath. "Pampered baby" wasn’t much different from "spoiled brat" and we all knew it.

  "Do you have a spoiled brat?" Echea asked.

  "No," Anne said.

  Echea looked at the house, the lawn, the lake, and whispered. "You do now."

  Later, my husband told me he heard this as a declaration. I heard it as awe. My daughters saw it as something else entirely.

  "I think you have to fight Susan for it," Anne said.

  "Do not!" Susan shouted from the porch.

  "See?" Anne said. Then she took Echea’s hand and led her up the steps.

  That first night we awakened to screams. I came out of a deep sleep, already sitting up, ready to do battle. At first, I thought my link was on; I had lulled myself to sleep with a bedtime story. My link had an automatic shut-off, but I sometimes forgot to set it. With all that had been happening the last few days, I believed I might have done so again.

  Then I noticed my husband sitting up as well, groggily rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

  The screams hadn’t stopped. They were piercing, shrill. It took me a moment to recognize them.

  Susan.

  I was out of bed before I realized it, running down the hall before I had time to grab my robe. My nightgown flapped around me as I ran. My husband was right behind me. I could hear his heavy steps on the hardwood floor.

  When we reached Susan’s room, she was sitting on the window seat, sobbing. The light of the full moon cut across the cushions and illuminated the rag rugs and the old-fashioned pink spread.

  I sat down beside her and put my arm around her. Her frail shoulders were shaking, and her breath was coming in short gasps. My husband crouched before her, taking her hands in his.

  "What happened, sweetheart?" I asked.

  "I-I-I saw him," she said. "His face exploded, and the blood floated down."

  "Were you watching vids again before sleep?" my husband asked in a sympathetic tone. We both knew if she said yes, in the morning she would get yet another lecture about being careful about what she put in her brain before it rested.

  "No!" she wailed.

  She apparently remembered those early lectures too.

  "Then what caused this?" I asked.

  "I don’t know! " she said and burst into sobs again. I cradled her against me, but she didn’t loosen her grip on my husband’s hands.

  "After his blood floated, what happened, baby?" my husband asked.

  "Someone grabbed me," she said against my gown. "And pulled me away from him. I didn’t want to go."

  "And then what?" My husband’s voice was still soft.

  "I woke up," she said, and her breath hitched.

  I put my hand on her head and pulled her closer. "It’s all right, sweetheart," I said. "It was just a dream."

  "But it was so real," she said.

  "You’re here now," my husband said. "Right here. In your room. And we’re right here with you."

  "I don’t want to go back to sleep," she said. "Do I have to?"

  "Yes," I said, knowing it was better for her to sleep than be afraid of it. "Tell you what, though. I’ll program House to tell you a soothing story, with a bit of music and maybe a few moving images. What do you say?"

  "Dr. Seuss," she said.

  "That’s not always soothing," my husband said, obviously remembering how the House’s Cat in the Hat program gave Kally a terror of anything feline.

  "It is to Susan," I said gently, reminding him. In her third year, she played Green Eggs and Ham all night, the House’s voice droning on and on, making me thankful that our room was at the opposite end of the hall.

  But she was three no longer, and she hadn’t wanted Dr. Seuss for years. The dream had really frightened her.

  "If you have any more trouble, baby," my husband said to her, "you come and get us, all right?"

  She nodded. He squeezed her hands, then I picked her up and carried her to bed. My husband pulled back the covers. Susan clung to me as I eased her down. "Will I go back there if I close my eyes?" she asked.

  "No," I said. "You’ll listen to House and sleep deeply. And if you dream at all, it’ll be about nice things, like sunshine on flowers, and the lake in summertime."

  "Promise?" she asked, her voice quavering.

  "Promise," I said. Then I removed her hands from my neck and kissed each of them before putting them on the coverlet. I kissed her forehead. My husband did the same, and as we were leaving, she was ordering up the House reading program.

  As I pulled the door closed, I saw the opening images of Green Eggs and Ham flicker across the wall.

  The next morning, everything seemed fine. When I came down to breakfast, the chef had already placed the food on the table, each dish on its own warming plate. The scrambled eggs had the slightly runny look that indicated they had sat more than an hour-not even the latest design in warming plates could stop that. In addition, there was French toast, and Susan’s favorites, waffles. The scent of fresh blueberry muffins floated over it all, and made me smile. The household staff had gone to great lengths to make Echea feel welcome.

  My husband was already in his usual spot, e-conferencing while he sipped his coffee and broke a muffin apart with his fingers. His plate, showing the remains of eggs and ham, was pushed off to the side.

  "Morning," I said as I slipped into my usual place on the other side of the table. It was made of oak and had been in my family since 1851, when my mother’s people brought it over from Europe as a wedding present for my many-great grandparents. The housekeeper kept it polished to a shine, and she only used linen placemats to protect it from the effects of food.

  My husband acknowledged me with a blueberry-stained hand as laughter made me look up. Kally came in, her arm around Susan. Susan still didn’t look herself. She had deep circles under her eyes, which meant that Green Eggs and Ham hadn’t quite done the trick. She was too old to come get us-I had known that when we left her last night-but I hoped she hadn’t spent the rest of the night listening to House, trying to find comfort in artificial voices and imagery.r />
  The girls were still smiling when they saw me.

  "Something funny?" I asked

  "Echea," Kally said. "Did you know someone owned her dress before she did?"

  No, I hadn’t known that, but it didn’t surprise me. My daughters, on the other hand, had owned only the best. Sometimes their knowledge of life-or lack thereof-shocked me.

  "It’s not an unusual way for people to save money," I said. "But it’ll be the last pre-owned dress she’ll have."

  Mom? It was Anne, e-mailing me directly. The instant prompt appeared before my left eye. Can you come up here?

  I blinked the message away, then sighed and pushed back my chair. I should have known the girls would do something that first morning. And the laughter should have prepared me.

  "Remember," I said as I stood. "Only one main course. No matter what your father says."

  "Ma!" Kally said.

  "I mean it," I said, then hurried up the stairs. I didn’t have to check where Anne was. She had sent me an image along with the e-mail-the door to Echea’s room.

  As I got closer, I heard Anne’s voice.

  "…didn’t mean it. They’re old poops."

  "Poop" was Anne’s worst word, at least so far. And when she used it, she put all so much emphasis on it the word became an epithet.

  "It’s my dress," Echea said. She sounded calm and contained, but I thought there was a raggedness to her voice that hadn’t been there the day before. "It’s all I have."

  At that moment, I entered the room. Anne was on the bed, which had been carefully made up. If I hadn’t tucked Echea in the night before, I never would have thought she had slept there.

  Echea was standing near her window seat, gazing at the lawn as if she didn’t dare let it out of her sight.

  "Actually," I said, keeping my voice light. "You have an entire closet full of clothes."

  Thanks, Mom, Anne sent me.

  "Those clothes are yours," Echea said.

  "We’ve adopted you," I said. "What’s ours is yours."

  "You don’t get it," she said. "This dress is mine. It’s all I have."