by Karen Bao
Yinha rounds a corner, bending her Pygmette’s segmented midsection with flawless piloting technique, and enters a hallway congested with Earthbound knickknacks: copper wire, metal screws, cracked video screens, and a brown plastic sheet bearing the word SNICKERS as if mocking its surroundings. Clunky rectangular equipment drifts by, metal coverings torn off, thick wires exposed like tangled intestines in an autopsied corpse.
Who wrecked the ISS? Either one of the Earthbound cities with spaceflight capabilities or the Bases themselves. But why? Battery Bay wouldn’t travel into space to scrounge metal and plastic when there’s so much of both on Earth. And why would the Bases need raw material? We haven’t built new structures in four decades, since we completed Base VI—our only settlement on the Far Side.
Yinha’s Pygmette halts beside mine. “Let’s go home,” she says.
Sorrow deadens her voice. Although I don’t feel it for the broken ISS, it’s within me too. Things in my life are also broken, things I’m glad are invisible.
32
DESPITE MY BEST INTENTIONS, I DON’T TAKE Yinha’s advice and apologize to Umbriel—or ask around about Leo Tau, whom I block from my thoughts anew every time the guilt flares up. With route calculations, packing, city tracking, contingency planning, team trial flights, and equipment checks filling my schedule, I don’t have the time.
Wes maintains a professional distance from me, a gap he bridges every so often with a questioning, pitying look. Missing someone, even if he’s right in front of you, is physically taxing. I’d jog a hundred laps around the Medical quarters if it meant sitting with him afterward, alone.
But there’s no time. I go straight from meetings with the team to strategizing sessions with Skat, whom Mom might call less resourceful than an Earthbound desert and less excited than a ground state electron. I imagine her grinning at me, asking if I get the chemistry joke.
I’m terrified I’ll never see my family again after August 24. I don’t want their memories of me to be forever shaded by my wrath.
On the day before I’m set to leave, foreboding drives me to the place I’ve avoided, seeking forgiveness—and strength.
“Sweetheart, what are you doing here?” Mom sits up in bed with a start. Her cheeks have filled out; her skin has more color, even if it’s still greenish. Her hair has grown back in patches, grayer than before and just long enough to cover the scars on her scalp. Despite these improvements, I worry that too much movement or feeling could still break her. “Aren’t you busy with Militia work?”
She’s really asking me: How could you leave us for so long? And what brings you back now?
“Done.” To avoid sending her fragile heart into palpitations, I don’t tell her about the mission.
She laughs, and I see more of the mother I remember: little wrinkles around her nose, teeth bared despite their recent discoloration. “No work today? So why the pinched face?”
“I’m sorry,” I blurt, sitting on the bed.
Mom pinches her lips together. “I’m sorry too.” She reaches for my hand. I let her take it. “When I saw you outside my cell, you weren’t the girl I remembered—you were strong, sharp, almost cruel. Forgive me . . . I thought you’d changed, or that I’d lost you.”
I say nothing, willing her to continue.
“I didn’t see that love had driven you to join Militia, and that love alone might save you.”
But affection for my family didn’t keep me from cruelty. “I hurt someone, Mom,” I say.
Mom tilts her head sideways, like I do when I’m waiting for someone to keep talking.
“A thief. I stunned him to facilitate arrest. He’s in Penitentiary now. I can’t count how many times I’ve imagined apologizing to him, to his family. . . .”
“I was afraid something like that would happen,” Mom says. “To have so much power, so young—I should have warned you about how it can change people.”
“I loathed Atrium duty. Hours of pointlessness, and wondering what I did to make you send me away.”
“I can only imagine how difficult that must have been. And I’m sorry beyond words for asking you to leave.” She pauses. “But I hope you’re not using the situation you were in as an excuse for your actions.”
“It was an explanation.” I only hope she won’t ask me to go away again, now that she knows about Leo.
“Oh, sweetie.” Mom fiddles with my fingers, calloused and corded with muscles, and looks into my face. “Why do you look so scared? Is it about tomorrow—is that why you came back? I’m not afraid. Tomorrow will put everything right, I promise.”
Before Mom went to Penitentiary, she feared losing her job, even temporarily. Now, she seems indifferent to losing her freedom—and us—forever. If the worst happens and she’s sent back to Penitentiary, I won’t be able to get her out, no matter what Militia title I earn.
“I’ve had months to prepare myself. Years, even.”
Years? How many? Why didn’t I notice her “preparations”?
“What did you do?”
She sighs. “Does that matter? It’s already been done.”
“Mom!”
“You wouldn’t understand. . . . Phaet, I spoke through many voices.” Mom looks away from my attentive face and down at the wrinkles in the bedspread.
What could that mean?
“I can’t tell you more. Not now . . . Is there anything else on your mind?”
“Nothing.”
“Something. I know when you want to let words into the universe, but you don’t. Is it your job? You can tell me more. I want to help you, to get to know you again.”
Shrug.
“I’m your mother—I’m here for you whenever you need me.”
How much longer will that be true?
“Look at my big girl.” She shakes her head. “Do you still need me at all? You saw the destitution in Shelter and took a job none of us wanted you to have. . . .” She pauses, and then words rush from her mouth. “Goodness, you’ve seen the real Moon now. What do you think of it?”
I remember Vinasa, how Militia killed her and sent us back to training the next day, forcing us to forget. Belinda, how Shelter’s slowly killing her and others like her. My pained expression tells Mom everything.
She bends closer to me. “Society can change, Phaet. What if you could choose whether to join Militia? The General and the Committee don’t need to know—or command—the minutiae of your life. Imagine returning to the greenhouses!”
“Mom—”
“When you were younger, after your shifts, you’d refuse to wash the soil from your hands because you loved the smell. . . .”
“Mom!”
She stops her monologue, realizing that she’s scared me. Few people dare to talk like that—about changing the Bases—even if the Committee’s eavesdroppers aren’t listening.
“All right.” Her eyes close. “I only want you three to grow up happy. When you have children, you’ll understand.”
I wonder if I’ll live that long. “If I have children.”
Mom misinterprets my words. “You don’t want them? But they’re so lovely, the people who show you what’s important.”
I look at our joined hands, a fragile link despite its physicality. Mom tips my chin back up.
“It’s hard to be certain of anything at your age, my girl. Especially at a time like this, when the world is full of changes.”
“Bad ones,” I say.
“Goodness and badness are unquantifiable. I’ve learned that in the weeks you’ve been gone. Here at home, looking at the three of you, I’ve thought about the future . . . and begun accepting the gray areas of the past. Like your decision to join Militia on our behalf—that was neither good nor bad.”
That’s not the impression she gave me last time.
“My stay in Penitentiary too,” she whispers.
“I don’t see how that could’ve been good.”
“Free food and solitude,” Mom says. “More than Shelter residents can
hope for.”
I’ve never thought about it like that. “Even without freedom?”
Mom blinks slowly. “In Penitentiary, I was just as free as I usually am—as anybody is. My mind could go anywhere, which was an improvement from putting other people’s thoughts into words and feeding them to an audience that doesn’t care. As I watched other inmates suffer, I grew surer that things need to change. No other family should experience what we have.”
“I agree,” I say, even though it’d be impossible to erase money problems, illness, and arrests from the population. Is Mom’s “crime” discussing solutions to these social problems? That’s something the Committee does every day. Perhaps the disruptive print charges aren’t as bad as we’ve feared.
“I’m glad you’re speaking honestly. I’d love to see you do that more.”
I’ve gotten that advice from her before, but this is the first time I want to follow it. During these weeks without me, she must have thought hard about how to share her opinion without putting me on the defensive.
“Someday—and I know it might not be soon—when you want to say something, start it with a whisper, grow it louder. Remember that, even as you get older.”
Suddenly, I’m scared—she’s talking about the rest of my life. “Stop.”
She opens her mouth, takes a breath; I prepare to hear her reasons for telling me these things. When she shakes her head and parentheses form around her mouth, I exhale in disappointment.
“I’m sorry, my girl, I don’t mean to lecture you. But everything I’ll ever tell you, I should tell you now. Just in case I—”
“What’s ‘everything’?” I don’t want to hear the worst.
“Only one more sentence, something I wish I’d said more often.” Mom throws her hands up as if surrendering. I reach mine out and hold them, feeling the creases in her calloused skin, lines formed by decades of typing, gesturing, caressing.
“I love you, sweetie.”
Isn’t it odd how those words can frighten fear itself out of a room? I suppose I came here today, ignorant and confused and not knowing my purpose, to say them back to her.
When Cygnus arrives home from Primary, he pokes his head into Mom’s room and gives me a thumbs-up, his mouth spreading into a disproportionately large smile. He tiptoes back into the living room and hunches over the HeRP, whose screen is now so populated with icons that fitting them on there must have been akin to playing handscreen Tetris.
We hear Anka greet Cygnus some fifteen minutes later. She stayed after class to run about with her friends in the gymnasium, just like she always did before Umbriel and I walked her home. Umbriel. If Anka’s here, then he is too.
I hug Mom with care. After leaving her side, I wave back at her and shuffle into the living room. Two dark eyes fix upon me with fright, and another two with resentment.
“So you’re back.” Umbriel places Anka’s knapsack on the ground and advances toward me.
I thought so hard about what I’d say to him—I lost control, forgot who I was. Stress was no excuse for how I treated you and everyone else, so I’m sorry. Just ask Mom—she’ll tell you I’m remembering how to be good again. But now nothing comes out.
“Umbriel! Thanks for sending Anka home—oh.” Mom has risen and inched in our direction; she’s leaning against the wall nearest her room. Recognizing that there’s a standoff, she changes her tone. “Maybe you should head to Agriculture, Umbriel. Doesn’t your shift start soon?”
“Don’t go,” I say. I should have taken the initiative, sought him out earlier. But I can be the first to say—
“Sorry,” we sputter together, as if we’d planned to synchronize it.
Umbriel has thought hard about his speech beforehand, judging by its fluidity. “I’m so sorry about getting mad at you. Catching crooks is your job, just like gardening is my job, right? Even if it involves mean looks and too much electricity, you’re still Phaet. But you know that. You came home.”
“It took a while,” Cygnus mutters.
“So?” Anka nudges his shoulder. “Stop bugging Phaet.”
“Your sister’s right,” Mom says. “We don’t have much time to be together.”
“Right, you four need Theta time. I should get going.” Umbriel checks the clock on his handscreen and backs toward the door. “But it’s great having you back, Phaet.”
The happiness in his eyes numbs the sting of what transpired in the Atrium. Our friendship was grazed, scraped on the surface, but it’s grown back thicker.
“Everything okay?” I ask, following him.
“Between us? Things were always okay.”
It’s not true, but it’s soothing to hear. Now that he’s forgiven me, I’m closer to forgiving myself.
“Thanks,” I sigh.
Umbriel hugs me as if nothing has changed. I’m glad he found me here. At this point in our companionship, we’d be senseless to face tomorrow without each other’s goodwill.
As he leaves, Mom stumbles to the sofa. Cygnus holds her arm, lowering her incrementally into a seated position.
“You three, all here again.” Mom folds Anka into her free arm, so that my siblings flank her on either side. Her eyes, aglow with affection, invite me to join them.
I cross the room, push our side table closer to the couch, and sit on its rigid surface to face Mom. Her hand finds mine atop my knee.
“Before Phaet and I went away,” she begins, “I thought that if only your dad were with us, this home would be complete.”
Cygnus, Anka, and I start at the mention of Dad. Mom’s actions in years past have made him virtually taboo—we never thought she’d be the first to break the silence.
“The last time he was here, you three were so little. He’d lie on his back and use his shins to float you up like a bird, Phaet. Remember?”
Nod. The memories are vague, tender sensations rather than colorful images.
“And Cygnus, he’d peel bananas for you because you couldn’t split the skin. Anka—he constructed a secret language with you, all vowels.”
My brother scrunches his eyes, embarrassed. Anka laughs, flushing pink. Watching them, I’m so happy that my mouth muscles grow sore from smiling.
“Do I wish my Atlas could see you three now, grown tall and magnificent? Yes, every day.” No frown-parentheses surround Mom’s mouth. Admitting her longing for him, at last, has freed her. “It’s so hard, now, to gather just the four of us in one place. This is precious. This is enough. Whoever’s around you, in the present, is all you need.”
More beautiful advice, I think as Mom pulls us into a hug. Advice I’m not sure is true.
Tomorrow, when Mom goes to Law and I descend to Earth, it’ll be put to the test.
33
EVERY DAY, IT’S GOTTEN HARDER TO EMERGE from the dreamless cavity where my mind retreats when I sleep. My first thought when I wake has been, That buzzing in my hand means I need to get up now, and my second: Mom’s trial is in x number of days. The shock got severe when x equaled three. Then x equaled two. Then one.
Today, the countdown ends.
At 16:47, I begin walking toward the hangar; I had meant to leave at 16:30 for our 16:57 launch, but triple-checking my clothes and equipment took longer than expected. I stub my toe twice and make a wrong turn, which eats up another minute while I correct my mistake. When I finally arrive in the hangar, my team and three-person ground crew await me at our assigned destroyer. Wes yawns, squeezing his bloodshot eyes shut. My guess is that he hasn’t slept much, preparing for the mission.
Fearful of betraying my state of mind, I open the hatch with my thumbprint and nod at my team to climb into the ship. As Io passes me, I hear the evening news blaring from her handscreen; I doubt she even knows it’s playing. She’ll have to shut off the program soon, or at least mute it.
After Orion and Nash enter the hatch, I gesture for Wes to go next. As he passes me, he wraps one arm around my shoulders, sending an obvious shudder through them. Months have passed since I’v
e gotten a hug from him, and I wasn’t expecting one now, given what he’s seen me do under pressure.
“We’re going to do a fine job, Phaet. There’s no one else I’d rather have as flight leader.”
From the look on his face, he’d like to elaborate, but mere minutes remain until takeoff. I wonder what else he’s been meaning to say. Maybe after spending so many hours training with me, a girl who once couldn’t imagine firing a laser into living flesh, he understands that I’m not the Beater I must have seemed in the Atrium. I nod at him.
After I hoist myself into the ship, the ground crew closes the hatch. As I oversee the final systems check, I can’t stop thinking about Mom’s trial, which will start three minutes after liftoff.
We strap ourselves into the seats I assigned weeks ago, test the audio system, and check the fit of our flight gloves, which are impervious to temperature, light, and sound. Orion sits in the pilot’s seat, flipping switches and reading measurements. Wes takes right wingtip, Nash takes left, and Io sits as copilot. We lift off smoothly, as expected.
To maximize security and efficiency, our flight path will hug the lunar surface until we reach the point closest to Pacifia’s current location. For now, we coast past familiar pits and peaks; the acceleration downward due to gravity is still 1.62 meters per second squared. When it drops to zero, and we’re on autopilot toward Earth, I might literally get sick.
My teammates concentrate on their respective tasks, except for Io, who’s technically backup for Orion. She’s muted her handscreen, probably a result of someone’s prodding, but her glove’s off and she’s still tuned in. The news shows an advertisement for a newly developed fruit—the round, khaki-colored, and stringy Celerorange.
As I open my mouth to scold her, the commercial fizzles out. We haven’t traveled far enough to lose the signal; there must be a malfunction. Intrigued, I slip off my glove and turn on the evening news on my own handscreen, adjusting the volume to a low setting. In my lifetime, there has never been a glitch on a broadcast.