by Josi Russell
“Fair enough.” Ethan stood anxiously by the mouth of the tunnel until Maggie, and then Brynn, worn and quiet, emerged from it. Without asking, he led them to the warmest part of the room, where the party spread out and lay on the heated stone, each resting off the last of their fear.
Chapter 17
For the last several days, Aria had hiked the vast empty range, meeting up with Hank to trade goods and using his tips to find and gather kwai fruits and katellis and sumnas on her own. And looking, always looking, for any sign of Ethan.
The fruits were so abundant in the mountains, and she so enjoyed gathering them, that she found herself with overflowing baskets of them on the table and counters. She had dropped some off at Kaia’s, at Luis’s, at Silas’s and Yi Zhe’s, and many of the other passengers of Ship 12-22 who were still in Coriol, but she still had more than she and the children could eat. And the fear that she might never find Ethan was growing, so she fought to find things to keep her busy.
She found herself reaching out more, trying to keep the grief at bay by bringing help or hope to someone. Today, she had come to the industrial district to find Daniel Rigo’s family and share with them the delicious fruits she’d gathered.
But now she was lost in the street and growing anxious. The press of people on the street in the baking late afternoon sun made Aria feel claustrophobic. She had brought the stroller, and both Polara and Rigel rode contentedly, unaware of her growing discomfort.
She couldn’t wander like this any longer. The crush of weary workers coming home from work swirled around her like eddies in a stream as she stopped and turned toward the crowd. She stopped several people, but though they were polite, no one knew the Rigos. Just as she was about to give up, she spotted a woman whose hair and face were smudged with the fine dust of the Yynium refinery and whose eyes looked kind.
“Excuse me, my name is Aria Bryant. Do you know where I might find the Rigo family?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. Aria felt a surge of hope. This was not the blank stare she’d received from everyone else. “What do you want with them?”
“I just—” How to explain? “I met their son Daniel the other day and I wanted to give them a gift.” She reached under the stroller and produced one of the juicy purple katelli fruits. It was heavy and full in her hands, and the vibrancy of its color was a sharp contrast to the drab and dusty crowd flowing around them.
The woman half-reached for the fruit, then stopped herself. She nodded. “They live in my building. That’ll be good for those little ‘uns.” She gestured. “I’m Joyce. C’mon with me and I’ll show you where they live.”
They wound through the streets of the industrial district, and the crowd began to thin out. Aria felt the presence of the huge cement buildings on either side of the street like looming giants, gobbling the people a handful at a time until there were only a few dozen left trudging home. The buildings effectively blocked out the horizon and most of the sky, except for a thin long strip of blue running along like a ribbon above them.
“These sure are big buildings,” Aria said.
“Not big enough,” Joyce said. “Too many people to fit in them all.”
“Didn’t you get cottages when you came?” Aria asked.
Joyce scoffed. “We got cottages,” she said bitterly, “way out on the other side of the city. It took me an hour each way to get to the mill.” Joyce shook her head. “I couldn’t leave my kids all the way out there for that long. So, we moved in with my brother’s family in the G building. That was six years ago. We’re still there.”
Aria couldn’t think what to say. It surprised her that people had moved here because they wanted to, that it wasn’t directly the Saras Company making them live here.
“Couldn’t you use the sol train?” she asked. “To make the trip to the mill quicker?”
“Fare or food?” Joyce asked, a hard tone in her voice. “Can’t have both.” She looked up at the towering buildings beside them. “Two families in one apartment gets a little tight.” Joyce’s eyes were distant. “Even after my husband died, we still don’t have enough room.”
Aria’s stomach twisted. After my husband died. Would she be saying that someday? Thoughts of Ethan rushed to her, though she fought them back, as she’d been doing all week.
“I’m sorry about your husband,” she managed. “What happened?” As soon as she said it she was sorry, but there was no taking it back.
Joyce didn’t seem to take offense. “Dustlung,” she said simply. “Although the doctors wouldn’t ever admit it. Said he brought a virus with him from Earth. Said the conditions here brought it out of latency. But that’s a lie. Tamir was never sick a day in his life on Earth. Worked in the mill for three years and started coughing, day and night. Couldn’t stop. I know it was the dust. By the end, he was blue nearly all the time. Couldn’t get enough air.”
“I’m sorry,” Aria said again.
“Not your fault,” Joyce said. “Probably what we can all look forward to.”
For the first time, Aria noticed the dry coughs of the people around her. Coming and going, men and women, their occasional explosive breaths punctuated the crowd. And, she noticed, some of them had purple marks on their necks or cheeks.
“What are those marks?” Aria asked Joyce in a low voice.
“Minean fever,” Joyce replied, shaking her head sadly.
Aria glanced nervously down at the children. Why had she brought them here? Were these things contagious?
They made a turn into one of the gray doorways. “This is it,” said her guide, “you’ll find them up on the sixteenth floor. Apartment B. Just above mine.” She turned toward a wide electronic bulletin board just inside the door, where people were crowded, reading a scrolling screen. “Guess I’d better see if I have a job tomorrow.”
Aria forgot her fears for a moment. “Is there trouble at the mill?”
Joyce reached to the wall, where a thick pad of the little Taim plants was growing, and swiped her hand through it, smearing them in a sweeping crescent shape.
“These’ve got into the mill,” she said disgustedly, wiping her hand on her overalls. “Gummin’ up the machinery and spreading like bad news.” She gestured at the board, “Management has been sending cleaning crews to the worst spots. But they grow like crazy. Seems like the more people working at a station, the more of these grow.”
Aria remembered how she had speculated that the Taim liked to be where people were. A companion plant. Only philodendrons never caused this much trouble.
Joyce was still talking. “You never know if your station is down or not. Gotta check morning and night. No use going out there to stand around. And Saras don’t pay if your station is down.”
Aria nodded as the woman moved into the crowd. “Good luck, Joyce,” she said. Turning away, she remembered the abundance of fruit in the stroller. “Joyce!” she called.
The woman turned back, deep lines around her eyes. Aria bent and gathered four of the slippery fruits from the basket and piled them in the arms of her guide.
Joyce’s eyes welled with sudden tears, but she blinked them back. “Thank you,” she said simply.
“I’ll bring you more next time I gather them,” Aria promised. “Thank you for helping me.”
It was a long elevator ride up to the sixteenth floor. A suspicious silence hung over the elevator, and the tenants of the building kept shooting uneasy glances toward the woman and the stroller. Yynium dust hung in the air, and the ever-present coughs shook the workers as they rode.
When she finally got out, Aria breathed a sigh of relief. Apartment B was easy to find, and two little girls answered her knock.
“Is your mother home?” Aria asked. “Or your brother Daniel?”
The children ushered their visitors into a stark, drab room with one worn sofa against the far wall and a scattering of bedding piled in a corner. The only bright thing was the detailed drawings covering one wall. They were designs for beautiful hovercars
, powerful machinery, and ships with smooth, arcing lines. Daniel’s name was written neatly in the corner of each one. Aria had seen enough of Kaia’s drawings to know what skilled designs looked like, and she was impressed. She’d have to introduce Daniel to Kaia someday.
The thick, pasty smell of Saras mush, made from the cheap ground grain known as brakkel, something akin to Earth’s oats, filled the apartment. One of the little girls left to get Daniel, and the other one gravitated to Polara, who was playing with the doll Hannah, the doll maker from Ship 12-22, had given her.
“I’m Merelda,” the little girl said. “That’s my sister Nallie. What’s your name?”
“Polara.”
“I like your doll.”
“Thank you. I like your—” Polara looked around frantically. Aria could see that she was taking in, for the first time, the barren walls, the dirty carpeting, and the grimy windows, which let in a sickly gray light. Polara searched for something to say. “Eyes!” she finished enthusiastically.
The little girl smiled. She did have remarkable eyes. They were blue-gray, nearly violet.
Daniel flashed his broad smile as he came into the room, and his mother rushed past him and unabashedly threw her arms around Aria, murmuring in the same unfamiliar language that Daniel had used when she’d given him the rangkors that day.
“Dama, dama, dama.” Though Aria wished Ethan was there to tell her what the language was, there was no mistaking the meaning of the soft words.
“You’re welcome,” Aria said.
“This is my mother, Marise,” Daniel said affectionately.
As the woman released her, Aria bent and retrieved the basket of katelli.
“I gathered these,” she said, holding them out, “and I thought you’d like some.”
Daniel translated for his mother, who suddenly looked scared. She smiled politely, but shook her head.
Aria was surprised. The children looked at the fruit longingly. They obviously needed it.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
Daniel’s mother spoke in her native language again, and Daniel translated for her.
“She says the wild fruits can make people sick.”
“Ahh.” Aria nodded. The Health and Human Services campaign was still propagating that myth. Their brightly-illustrated posters lined the clinics and showed up on bulletin screens across Coriol, but the premise was so incorrect that Aria had long ago dismissed them. Besides, she suspected the campaign had more to do with the Market District’s desire to keep its monopoly on fruit than it did with actual medical facts.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Aria assured them, “these are perfectly safe.” She brought one to her mouth and took a bite.
Daniel’s mother waved her arms. “No, no, no, no!” she repeated, rushing to Aria and snatching the fruit. She disappeared into the kitchen and Aria heard the waste disposer activate as she swallowed the bite.
Daniel was apologizing as his mother came back into the room, speaking rapidly. He fought to translate quickly enough.
“She says that the sickness is spreading and we can’t take chances and your children are beautiful and they need you and you shouldn’t be—” he hesitated and offered his mother another word in their language, but she shook her head.
“Tubba,” Marise said obstinately.
Daniel sighed, an apology in his eyes. “That you shouldn’t be stupid.”
Aria fought a smile. She admired Marise’s boldness. But she also longed to see the pale, thin children bite into those juicy fruits. They needed the nutrition. Saras mush was nothing to feed growing children on for long.
“I am a plant scientist,” she said. “I know they’re safe.”
Marise shook her head. She started to speak, but waved an impatient hand and reached for Aria, pulling her toward the door.
“She wants you to come with her,” Daniel said helpfully.
“I gathered,” Aria said, resisting. “But my children—”
Marise followed her gaze to the stroller and spoke quickly to Daniel. “I’ll watch them,” he said. “She says don’t bring them with you.”
Aria hesitated, but her curiosity was piqued, and Polara and Merelda were chattering happily about the doll, so she figured it would be all right to leave them for a moment.
Marise led her down the hall, past apartments 35, 36, 37, and 38. When they arrived at apartment 39, Marise entered without knocking.
A woman, lying on the sofa, turned as they entered. Aria bit her cheek to keep from gasping. Huge purple bruises covered the woman’s face, neck, and arms. They were iridescent, ranging from pale lavender to deep violet, fading at the edges to a sickly blue-green. The woman shifted, her face a mask of pain. Fever burned in her eyes. She groaned a greeting to Marise in the Rigo’s language, and Marise gestured to her, speaking rapidly. The woman spoke, then looked at Aria, making a gesture of eating and then shaking her head emphatically.
Was it possible that this came from eating the fruits? The thought of the blighted crops at the farm came back to Aria. Could the two be related? Aria felt dizzy. Her shock must have shown on her face, despite her best efforts, because Marise waved to her friend and ushered Aria back to her own apartment.
The encounter had taken less than a minute, but the sight of the woman was burned into Aria’s brain. Suddenly, she didn’t feel safe. Even more than the cough, she feared this new disease. She stepped quickly to the stroller, assessing her children, a fierce sense of protection welling in her.
Marise was speaking to her, and Daniel’s voice brought her his mother’s words: “She says that’s why you have to listen to the doctors. You have to be smart. Mother’s friend was eating berries she found in the park, and a few days later, she started getting the marks. She has another friend with the marks who walked home in the rain last week without an umbrella and got too wet and cold. She thinks those things are . . .” Aria heard the word again, tubba, and knew he was hesitating to speak it. In fact, when he spoke again, he softened it: “Foolish.”
Aria was beginning to wonder herself.
“Daniel, are there others with the marks?”
He nodded. “Several people have gotten them lately. I have a friend who has them. He’s very sick.”
“What are the doctors saying?” Saras employed many doctors, and there were ample health services in the city.
“It seems everyone gets a different answer.” So they didn’t know either, then. Aria felt a knotting anxiety. She needed to get her children home.
She glanced down as Polara handed her doll to Merelda.
“You keep her,” Polara said, “and play with her every day.” Aria was proud of her.
Merelda held the doll with reverence. Her sister Nallie stroked its string hair and ran a gentle finger over its painted face.
As Aria pushed the stroller out the door, she heard the little girls calling in unison: “Dama! Dama!”
Chapter 18
Galo felt an intense darkness threatening to engulf him. Every effort he made was coming to nothing. He had tried to use the new information Elencha had given him to locate the Vala on the little blue planet he’d been circling. He had planned to collect his property and be on his way. He had deliveries to make.
But he was no tracker. It had taken him and his first assistant and scanner specialist, Uumbor, a few cycles just to get the scanning equipment calibrated to detect not only Vala life signs, as he’d been scanning for, but also the unique Vala trail that they left behind while in their sleeping state, which Elencha had revealed to him. To calibrate the equipment, they’d tethered one of his remaining Vala children to the ship and floated her into space, running various scans on her until the sensors could detect the Vala trail with ease.
As they had worked, he’d watched the Vala, so seemingly weak, enter her sleeping state and become fortified against the dangers of space that would kill him in seconds. When they pulled her back in, she awoke unscathed. Such a valuable asset.
“Scan this continent for any sign of a Vala trail,” Galo demanded. Uumbor conducted the scan.
“Still nothing, sir.”
That’s when Galo began to worry. He knew they were here. They couldn’t have traveled anywhere yet. But what if the Vala had not simply fled? What if they’d been stolen and were now being hidden from him by someone on this planet? Their abilities were valuable beyond measure. Anyone who learned of them would want the Vala for their own.
“Who is living on this planet, and where are they?” he demanded.
Uumbor punched a pattern on his keyboard.
“They are the human race,” he said, “uninteresting. Mostly industrial. Class 3.”
Galo nodded. That was good. If it came to fighting, they were well-matched, and he would have a slight advantage.
The scan screen showed an outline of the planet. Most of it was dark, but a corner of one continent showed a few red dots: settlements. They were halfway around the planet from Galo’s Cliprig. There was no civilization on this side. At least if there was a battle there wouldn’t be many of these humans to fight.
Galo opened his fleet communications line. He summoned eight ships and put the rest of his fleet on standby. “Have your Vala ready at all times,” he said. “If I summon you, you must be here immediately.”
The ships that appeared around him in orbit were his best-armed, but not his most agile. They were mostly skybarges, with two windcraft in case he needed quicker maneuvering.
“I’m going around to those settlements,” he told his ships over the communications line. “Stay with me.”
Galo was skilled at controlling the big ship, and they were soon hanging in a steady orbit far above the settlements on the other side of the planet. He squinted at the screens and spoke forcefully to Uumbor at the scanner. “Scan for Vala life signs in these settlements.”