by Karen Bao
Orion introduces himself and shakes everyone’s hand, prompting Ariel to ask if everyone in Militia is so “approachable.” A meter away, Wes studies his own feet. Maybe he knew what Mom’s quarantine really was—but this, his signature awkwardness, is ordinary. It proves nothing.
“Why don’t you join and find out?” Orion garnishes his words with a wink. Laughter bubbles from Ariel’s belly as he tries to hide the bloom on his cheeks—how could anyone laugh so much at such a time? His anxiety must be causing him to overcompensate with geniality.
Ariel and Orion chat about mutual friends, funny things they’ve seen recently, each trying to make the other laugh harder than he did before, until two young women with Orion’s wheat-colored hair—his sisters, I guess—pull him away.
With his companion gone, Wes scans my face, looking for either permission to stick around or an order to leave. Hoping not to appear rude, I shrug. Do whatever you like.
But my brother turns his back on Wes. “Hmph.”
“Wes, the guy from Medical,” Anka says matter-of-factly, offsetting Cygnus’s insolence. I can’t imagine my siblings having warm sentiments toward Wes, so Anka’s good manners are a surprise.
“Are you two part of Str—Phaet’s family as well?” Wes asks the twins.
“For all practical purposes.” Umbriel reaches a hand backward and latches his fingers onto mine.
Wes’s eyebrows shoot up. “Ah.”
“Wes helps me with endurance, strength, martial arts . . .” I offer. “For rankings.”
“Thank you,” Umbriel mumbles to Wes. “I’m glad she’s safe.”
“I’m sure she would have been fine on her own. Stripes takes pretty good care of herself.” Wes peers at my hand, enveloped in Umbriel’s, and says, “Anyhow, I should be off. Nice seeing everyone again. Wish you the best.”
He’s his usual self. He must not have known he was taking Mom, ultimately, to a jail cell and not a hospital room. Medical or Law wouldn’t inform him—a low-level assistant—about a heinous crime, especially one against the state.
“Bye, Wes,” says Anka, before whispering something to Cygnus.
Wes jogs away through the crowd.
“He seems nice but . . . uncomfortable,” Umbriel comments. “Like he’s hiding something. Where’s his family?”
“Base I, he said. Does it matter? He’s trying to help, and he’s the number two trainee.” I dust off my hands, telling Umbriel to hold back on the subject of my mother until we find privacy.
“Then I’m glad you’re on his good side.” Umbriel squeezes my hand harder, pulling me toward the exit of the Defense Department. “Let’s get you home.”
Anka’s handscreen projects a three-dimensional view of the night sky into our dark bedroom, throwing pinpricks of light on her face. She has drawn imaginary animals and figurines around the stars of nine constellations; smooth and graceful, each seems to be stretching toward something unseen. I’m glad she has made something lovely over the past month instead of wallowing in sorrow and rage.
She zooms in on Cetus, the Whale, holding her handscreen far from our faces so that it picks up less of our conversation. “See that red star in the middle? Right there—it’s Mira, our mom.”
How sweet of her.
“My teacher said that Mom’s name means ‘wonderful’ or something nice like that. My name means ‘phoenix.’ How come you never told me that?”
“You never asked.” I poke her nose. “It’s Arabic.”
“What’s Arbick?”
“An old Earthbound language.”
Anka zooms out from Cetus and shows me a different constellation. “I missed you a lot too, so I drew Columba. The Dove.”
I can’t help but hug her.
“Here’s Phaet, the dove star.” Anka points at the biggest white dot, right where the bird’s eye would be. “And this is Wezn—‘weights.’”
It’s a smaller dot, down in the cardiac region.
“Are you good friends with Wes? You should be. You’re in the same constellation.”
“Not every Pollux likes every Castor, and those stars are both in Gemini.”
My little sister throws her hands above her head in mock exasperation. “You know what I mean! A lot of people’s names come from Gemini. No one pays attention to Columba.” She studies the constellation, purses her lips, and shifts them rapidly from side to side. “Do you like Wes?”
I shake my head, amazed that Anka has the time and energy for such trivial accusations. And when did she start emphasizing random syllables with assertive inflections in her voice?
Even sitting, I can tell that she’s gotten taller. Anka has hit puberty with no mother to guide her through its mysteries—and thanks to the Militia, no sister either.
Anka shuts off her handscreen and sits on it. “Do you like Umbriel?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you sure?”
I dodge the question with a question. “Do you like someone?”
She sticks out her tongue, a persistent gesture from her younger years. “Yuck.”
Her extravagant reaction makes me wonder. “I won’t tell if you do.”
“Okay. You don’t talk to anyone really, so, um, someone in my class. Rigel.” Anka giggles into my shoulder. “He called my star map pretty, and he helps me with algebra. Which is so embarrassing.” Her smile turns upside down. “Why can’t I be good at math like you?”
The sudden despondency in her voice rubs my heart the wrong way. Those who fall behind in Primary mathematics can’t Specialize in scientific fields. Not that Anka would want to—she’d rather draw. But she won’t earn a decent living from that, even if she nabs a spot in the oft-ignored Visual Design Department. Still, I allow myself the hope that Anka can find her place.
I hug her again. “People will always need something pretty or interesting to look at.” Even if it’s just a tray of stolen moss or a colorful Committee poster. “You’ll make it for them.”
She grins, even laughs. “You and Mom are the only ones who get it.” Then she says, “I love you, Phaet.”
“Love you too,” I slip in, before she starts her Rigel chatter again. Rigel is so smart, so nice. I wish I knew how to get her mind off him, because she should concentrate on other things. When I was her age, I didn’t get excited about Umbriel, maybe because I knew him too well. So much for being a good big sister.
“Lunch!” the twins holler from the kitchenette.
As we step over a pile of discarded robes, I try to disregard the mess in the apartment. The chairs aren’t pushed in, the table isn’t clean, the plastic furniture isn’t dusted, and old Tinbie hasn’t been fixed. He’s still under the table, toppled over, the yellow light gone from his eyes. I should’ve predicted that if I left the apartment to topsy-turvy Cygnus, everything inside would end up topsy-turvy too. I roll Tinbie under the plastic sofa, but one of his wheels falls off. I kick it out of sight.
We take our usual seats at the table, except for Umbriel, who sits at Mom’s old place. He and Ariel have assembled sandwiches with soy patties in the middle; I hope Umbriel didn’t snag them from Culinary. It’s the best meal we’ve had since Cygnus’s last birthday, months before this whole Militia mess. Their efforts make me want to cry with homesickness.
“Thanks,” I manage. “You didn’t need to make all this. The food is more than enough in Militia—”
“Who cares? Just eat it,” Cygnus snaps. So I do, and the mild food is more savory than an enormous Militia meal, its flavor enhanced by the labor of the people I love.
We clean every bite of food off the table. It takes prodding from Anka for Cygnus to finish his sandwich, but eventually he nibbles away the last of it and grabs a banana for dessert.
Finally, everyone’s hands are free. Cygnus, unwilling to wait any longer for our critical discussion, tucks his left hand under his right upper arm.
We follow suit, covering our handscreens in various ways. Anka squeezes her hand between he
r knees.
As my brother speaks, the weight of heavy things sucks the life out of his voice. “You know me. I can’t sit still when something bad happens. Last night I poked through Law Department files—those zipperheads have no idea how encryption works—and found out what they busted her for.”
“Cygnus . . .” Umbriel glowers at him, looking parental.
“It’s not a joke, Umbriel; I saw it on the screen. Disruptive print . . . is never a joke.”
Silence falls, interrupted only by Anka’s whimpering.
“Disruptive print” means that the authorities believe the defendant has threatened the unity of the Bases by writing blasphemous statements. I’m more shocked than devastated. Mom couldn’t have committed such a horrible crime; she’s too smart. Besides, if she’s ever angry about a new law, or if a Militia member disrespects her in the corridors, she rants to Atlas, who pats her shoulder and mumbles placating words. Although these incidents always made me uncomfortable, they provided an outlet for Mom so that she wouldn’t need to hash her feelings out in print. Spoken tirades against the Committee or the Militia are smaller crimes: they’re called “disruptive speech,” which is harder for law enforcement to detect and less threatening to authority because it can’t be spread as easily.
Punishment for disruptive print is subjective, depending on how unpatriotic the accused’s writing is deemed by Law. Some convicts leave jail within a decade. Others are imprisoned for life, the same sentence suffered by murderers. The death penalty, as the Committee claims, has never been implemented. But they’ve lied to me once.
Ariel takes over. He works as an unpaid secretary in Law, where his brain stows every interaction it encounters. “Judging from the bail amount, I bet the prosecution has written proof against her.”
Cygnus nods. “All they have to do is prove that she wrote it—whatever ‘it’ is—with software that analyzes how much she uses certain words, sentence length, et cetera.”
“Basically,” says Ariel, “over time—and if things go their way, they’ll have a lot of time—their evidence will remain unchanged, while the witnesses my dad plans to call on to help your mom will gradually lose interest.”
“Your dad is her defense?” I’m impressed that the Phi family has already made plans to help us, even though I never asked them to. We’d be alone and afraid without them.
Ariel’s face falls—he thinks I’m insulting their efforts.
“Unless you want to waste seventy-five hundred Sputniks a month on someone else from Law,” says my brother. Apparently, the planning also involved Cygnus. He tosses the banana peel into the compost bin and hunches over his handscreen.
“As I was saying,” Ariel continues, “we need to have the trial soon. Before the witnesses get bored—and they will, if we wait a year. We need that bail money, to get your mom out of jail soon and to speed up the trial.”
It’ll have to come from me—all thirty-five hundred Sputniks of it, along with Mom’s fifteen hundred Sputnik joke of a Medical bill. I’ve got to push harder in Militia training. Ranking top seven won’t be good enough; I’ll have to shoot for fourth or better.
“And . . . the nature of Mira’s ‘crime’ means we’ll have a harder time winning.” Ariel’s expression is bleak. “Disruptive print is pretty rare—the only instance when someone was found innocent was thirteen years ago. I overheard Phobos Xi—he’s a colleague of Dad’s—telling that story when I was outside his office pretending to fill my canteen. He laughed at how he doesn’t think their strategy will work for your mom. I had Cygnus look into it last night.”
Cygnus shakes his head. “The family’s joint account shrank by 6,392 Sputniks after the trial.”
“Bribe,” I mutter.
The money needed is so far beyond our reach, we might as well go to Saturn to fetch it. But why not try? The practice is more widespread than the Committee would ever admit.
They’d also never admit to letting official communications tell children their only parent is in Medical while she’s really bound for the Pen. I’d hate to throw my hard-earned money at Law, but between indulging my sense of righteousness and saving Mom, I choose Mom.
“If we want to bribe them, Phaet has to become a sergeant—it’s the highest rank attainable out of training and without a commission from the Committee. There’s a new one in every batch of trainees. She has to place first out of fifty. All our other expenses considered, it’d take two months of sergeant salary—five thousand Sputniks, give or take—to get the bribe money together, while we still pay for rent, food, dues, all that. It’ll be tough, but do it for Mom. In case they say she’s guilty.”
I thought training was going well, but now I need to adjust my goals. First-place trainee. Sergeant. My family knows it’s nearly impossible, so there’s no use complaining. I feel a surge of resentment against Cygnus, who punches numbers on his handscreen all day and has no idea what he’s demanding of me: to top Jupiter, Callisto, Wes—or deplete myself trying.
Then I feel a flicker of ambition as I imagine myself as the victor. I always did enjoy beating Ariel and placing first in Primary.
But if I do win? I could assume command of less important missions, and in combat, I could direct a forty-person platoon. Officers’ contracts last longer than other soldiers’ because the Militia prizes continuity in the upper echelons. And if I do well enough for five or six years, the Committee might give me a commission to become a captain like Yinha. I might have to shelve my dream of becoming a Bioengineer and watch it gather dust.
“That’s all I had to say.” Ariel checks his handscreen and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I should get back to Law. . . . There’s a case I need to set up.”
“Don’t go,” Anka pleads.
Ariel makes a sad face. “My apologies. Later, Anka.” He pinches her cheek and elicits a snarl. Laughing, he whisks out the door.
“Nerd.” Umbriel chuckles. “Well. Let’s keep talking about our options—”
“Blah, blah, blah,” says Cygnus, stirring his water with his spoon.
Umbriel shoots him a dirty look.
“All you guys do is talk.” Anka stands without warning, knocking over her stool. “I just want Mom back.” She storms down the hallway to our room, sealing the white circular door with a snap.
“I’ll do something about her.” Cygnus scuttles down the hallway in pursuit. I want to follow them but wouldn’t know what to say.
Mom is good at this sort of thing, comforting people and picking tender words out of midair. Once, when some bully told Anka that she was stupid, Mom said, “A dog will bite others because it can’t bite its own tail.” It was almost certainly another old Earthbound saying from our great-grandmother, yet Anka understood that Gemma Lambda was the one with real insecurities—she got the same algebra marks as Anka but could hardly draw a stick figure. The bullying continued, but for the most part Anka didn’t let it bother her.
Now Umbriel and I are alone, and I can tell he’s been waiting for this moment. He scoots his chair closer and takes my right hand in his clammy one.
“We miss you around here.”
I know. They have time to immerse themselves in emotion, while I’ve been focusing every iota of my energy and attention on learning how to destroy people. I can’t look at Umbriel’s scrunched-up eyes, so I concentrate on his forehead. A loose curl, shaped exactly like a question mark, meanders between his brows. He should get a shorter haircut as per Agriculture regulations before the patrols shave his head bald.
“I worry about you. I can’t sleep. I want to join Militia myself, like Ariel said.”
My silvery hair is reflected in the liquid pooling along his bottom eyelids. I hope he doesn’t cry—I don’t want to deal with that—but luckily Umbriel keeps his tears inside, like me.
“Look at how much you’ve changed already.” He gestures at my clothes, at the new muscles visible through my shirt. “Will we still know each other when you’re done with this whole mess? Will
you still—”
“Of course.” Apart from my biological family, I love Umbriel best out of everybody in the universe, and I’ve missed him enough to know we shouldn’t be apart.
Elated, Umbriel stands up; his left hand slides into his pocket, while his right pulls me to my feet. He shows his perfectly straight teeth in an awkward grin.
I’ve gone too long without seeing it. I return his smile.
“Come home and you’ll be this happy all the time,” he whispers, even though we know it’s not possible or true. “You know how I feel about Militia?”
Because there’s no one to see us, he unabashedly sticks out his tongue instead of licking his incisors. I laugh out loud.
We hear small footfalls, and our heads swivel toward the sound. Cygnus and Anka solemnly stride into the kitchen, Cygnus with his arm around her, Anka rubbing tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. I used to do that, before I stopped crying altogether.
Anka hooks an arm around Umbriel’s free one, and Cygnus does the same to me, so that the four of us make a tight circle. Half white, a quarter green, a quarter black.
“Can you promise something?” Anka looks at the three of us in turn, her expression hopeful and challenging. “That we’ll all be together after this? Mom too?”
I think hard before replying, “No guarantees.”
Anka rolls her eyes, sighing. “Okay. Wrong question. Can you guys try to make it happen? I’m only eleven. I can’t do anything but wait.”
I resist the urge to tear up, swallowing hard. It was Anka’s birthday a week ago, and I forgot. Eleven is the fifth prime number—and the number that Anka would wish upon whenever it showed up twice on her handscreen’s digital clock.
“We’re trying everything,” Umbriel says. “We’ll bring Ms. Mira back; I know it.”
It’s sufficient for my sister, who gazes at him with adoration.
They both disappoint me. Umbriel shouldn’t make promises he’s unlikely to keep, and Anka shouldn’t believe him when he does.