Dove Exiled

by Karen Bao

  My head bobs in time with his words.

  “Murray said there were Lunar women,” I say. “She implied you left her for them.”

  “The words of a woman who believes she was scorned,” Lazarus says. “Her accusation has no basis in fact. But young Wesley, her brother, could not help but believe her and nurse a prejudice against me.”

  A voice from outside pierces the tent—Corporal Cressida’s. “Mr. Tarazed, sir! Major Skat Yotta’s here to collect today’s notes.”

  Lazarus looks as if he’d very much like to swear, but he holds his tongue. He grasps my shoulder and pulls me toward an open manhole. “You will receive communications from me when it is time. Until then, I beg you to stay underground, where it is relatively safe. The tunnels should be devoid of Militia until today’s moonquake ceases. I am distressed that I cannot provide additional assistance.”

  Bewildered and afraid, I stumble. It’s partly due to the force of his hands—and partly the tremors of the moonquake that’s just begun.

  Inertia pulls me forward; with Lazarus’s hand around my wrist, I drop a meter and a half into the tunnel and bend my knees when I land. Still, the impact jars all my joints.

  “Tarazed, the major’s waiting!” Cressida calls.

  “All the best, Sage,” Lazarus whispers, letting go of me. I wish he wouldn’t. “Good-bye for now.”

  The manhole seals above me, cutting off all light.

  28

  I PRESS MY BACK AGAINST THE tunnel wall and jam my head between my knees. Pipes clang above me, and dust, invisible in the pitch dark, blankets my skin and clothes. My memories rattle and shift like pebbles overturned by a rip current. Wavering impressions of Dad, of his tough hands and soft voice, pass before my eyes.

  I was five when Geology sent him to the Moon’s far side; a moonquake shook his faulty excavation vehicle until it sprang a leak. Decompression is far too pleasant a word to describe the way he died.

  He’s my first ghost, the only one for whom I feel no guilt. I won’t let Cygnus join him and the other dead.

  T2A1G3 . . . dodeca-chordata . . . The video begins to loop through my head.

  By the time a beam of white light shines between my knees, onto my face, I almost welcome the distraction.

  Who’s that? If I’m found, it’s over. I struggle to stand, trembling.

  “I knew it was you back there. . . . And what Beetle wouldn’t talk or hurt Anka?” The whisper is hoarse, familiar. “I got my ex-Sanitation-worker friend to let me into the tunnels.”

  My pupils contract enough to make out Umbriel, squatting next to me with a bowl of Shelter mush in his right hand. The light is emanating from his handscreen; he promptly sits on it to prevent anyone from eavesdropping on us. At least he only blots out some of the light. Our eyes lock for an instant, before the next tremor knocks him sideways.

  Laughing at his annoyed expression, I throw my arms around him. His skinny body nearly buckles—I forgot that I’m the stronger one now. Still, I don’t let go. “Aren’t you worried that the Militia will notice you’re missing?” I whisper. Because of his relationship with me, Umbriel must be under extra surveillance.

  “I was more worried that I’d never see you again.” Umbriel’s rough hand leaves my back to take my wrist.

  Men want different things, Murray said to me once.

  I pull away and lift the bowl of mush to my mouth, pour in the brown lettuce and watered-down wheat. The lukewarm liquid slips into my esophagus without leaving any taste in my mouth.

  Umbriel’s hand falls away, and his tone shifts. Months of frustration manifest in his words. “While you were off having adventures on Earth, Anka and I were stuck in that grit-pit Shelter, wondering if you were alive or dead. I blamed myself for not trying hard enough to stop you from blasting off with him.”

  Part of me had expected Umbriel to be so happy to see me that he’d forget our parting interaction: me choosing to run away with Wes, leaving Umbriel to watch over my siblings. “It can’t have been easy,” I say. “Sorry.”

  He gestures with his chin at the bowl of mush in my hands. “Easy? Try grueling. Literally.” Then he points to the top of his head, where his thicket of black hair used to grow. “Got a bad fever last month. They put me in quarantine and shaved me bald.”

  Oh. In such a dirty place, infections must run rampant. Has Umbriel’s family helped him? Where are his father and brother?

  “Back in Shelter, I didn’t see . . .”

  “Ariel and my dad are living at home.” Umbriel can still answer my questions before I finish asking them. “They’ve disowned me, as far as the Committee’s concerned, but they only did it to keep their jobs in Law. And Mom . . . the Committee kept her for interrogation. She’s probably given them megabytes’ worth of dirt on your family. All the memories, even the embarrassing ones.”

  I picture Caeli Phi’s face, and almost instantly, my head begins to throb. The rat. If not for her, Mom wouldn’t be dead, Cygnus wouldn’t be a captive, and Anka wouldn’t be in Shelter.

  What did Caeli hope to gain by turning in my mother for her rebellious writing? Money? A better job? Whatever it was, she discarded her relationships with Atlas and the twins to get it. It’s a terrible punishment, but somehow I don’t feel it’s enough.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Umbriel says. “I don’t know how she contributed half my DNA. It’s half, right? I’m starting to forget all the bio we learned in Primary. Give me a brain here, Phaet.”

  I swat his bony shoulder. Even after all these months apart, Umbriel knows how to crack my shell open, no matter how tightly I’ve sealed myself inside. No matter how upset he’s been.

  “You’re even more beautiful when you’re happy.” Umbriel studies my face.

  My smile inverts into a frown. Not now. Reuniting with Umbriel has brought up so many other emotions that I’ve nearly forgotten how uncomfortable he can make me. My appetite disappears. I put my half-eaten porridge on the floor, hunch my shoulders, and tuck in my legs. My mind is a void, the space in my skull a cavern.

  Umbriel gives a long, melancholy sigh.

  On the tunnel floor, the liquid surface of my leftover porridge vibrates with new shudders from the moonquake.

  “Talk to me, Phaet. I didn’t think it would come to this, but this time you’ve got to tell me what you’re thinking. I can’t figure it out.”

  There’s a new phenomenon: me, a mystery to him. Umbriel sighs again, but it’s a quick, anxious breath. “For a few months, I . . . I thought you wouldn’t come back. That was stupid, because I know you’d do anything for Cygnus and Anka. But what about me? What I mean is—blast it—you spent half a year on Earth with him, so does that mean you didn’t miss me? At least not the way I wish you did? What . . . what does Wes mean for us?”

  When we were twelve, Umbriel tried piloting a Pygmette speeder through the greenhouses with me on board. He slammed into a treetop, and it felt like my head would topple off my neck. He’s given me a similar shock, nearly four years later, with his words.

  Me and Umbriel. We never said it, but we grew up assuming that we’d start a family and spend our lives together. He was my favorite person, excepting Mom and my siblings, and we trusted each other entirely. As his mother proved, trust, even within a family, is rare here.

  I thought it was enough. But that was before I trained in Militia, before Wes helped me stand on my own, before he set me on fire somewhere deep beneath my skin.

  I shake my head. “Sorry.”

  In the awkward hush, I remember Wes letting Eri down easy, with kind words and a hug. But Eri wasn’t Wes’s best friend; they didn’t share toys, get into petty fist-swinging arguments, or concoct their own sign language. This is more complicated.

  Umbriel’s mouth opens and closes; he looks like a fish gulping at dry air. We’re both speechless—a situation neither of us knows
how to handle. “Did anything . . . happen with him?”

  I remember my last moments with Wes. One type of happiness, I muse, like rain and pine needles. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, so I say loud and clear, “Yes.”

  Umbriel scowls. “You fell in love.”

  I nod once.

  He crosses his arms. “I know Wes is mysterious and strong and all, but can you trust him? Does he know the real you? The real reason, for instance, that you haven’t really talked for ten years, and how hard it was to watch you go through that?”

  Ten years—since Dad died. I turn away, horrified that Umbriel would use that dark time as a guilt trip.

  “You completely shut down, Phaet. Remember, I had to tell people what you were thinking and feeling, since only I knew! After you started staring blankly at nothing, even during science lessons, everyone thought you were dead inside. Everyone but me.”

  I can’t look or listen to him anymore. I avert my eyes—and what I see makes panic seize me and hold on tight. Deep in the tunnel to our left, there are three bobbing handscreen lights.

  “I went on loving you anyway,” Umbriel goes on, oblivious. “Will Wes ever understand you like I d—”

  “Shh!” A tremor rocks the confined space; the lights move frenetically, revealing heavy black boots that pound the floor as they approach us. The authorities didn’t wait for the moonquake’s end before chasing after Umbriel.

  “. . . the infrared signal’s coming from somewhere near here,” we hear one soldier say.

  Umbriel springs to his feet. Out of habit, he reaches down to help me—but retracts his hand at the last instant.

  I stand on my own. I’m used to it now.

  “Wonder which of the Dovewailers tried to run away this time,” the soldier is saying.

  Because Umbriel and I don’t have LPS chips, the Beetles don’t know our identities. Yet.

  “I need to get back before they realize it’s me missing.” Even as the moonquake tries to knock him back down, Umbriel stays standing. “The tunnels under Shelter are sealed off, but if we’re lucky, a Dovetail-friendly Beetle might leave the doors open while the squad’s on rounds. Wait it out; get around them, and you can go to the greenhouses, somewhere like that.”

  We shuffle along the wall, away from the soldiers and Lazarus’s secret manhole entrance into Shelter. As the tunnel rattles, my shoes slip and slide on the floor’s coating of detritus. I breathe through my mouth so that the stench won’t affect me.

  We take three right turns, each navigated by Umbriel, and end up behind the soldiers. Then we sneak farther out and find the metal slab of a door through which they entered, open just a crack. A Dovetail mole in the squad must have left us an exit. Won’t always be this lucky, I tell myself.

  Umbriel and I throw our body weight against the slab. The bottom edge scrapes along the floor as the slab gives way.

  The soldiers must have heard that.

  Time to go. I fumble to find the words with which to tell Umbriel good-bye—and then the Militia’s lights sweep across the hall, passing alarmingly close to my head. A farewell nod suffices. Umbriel takes off down a side tunnel, possibly heading back toward the manhole that leads to Lazarus’s tent. I slip through the metal door, slam it shut with a mighty clang, and slide the bolt into place. The Beetles will need time to unlock it from the inside and force it open again.

  Strange, I think as I sprint through the still-quivering tunnel. I squirmed out of Umbriel’s arms a minute ago, yet I’d do anything short of sacrifice my freedom to bring him back to me now. But protecting that freedom will require hiding, waiting, surviving, away from him and Anka. Away from their light.

  29

  THE CEILING UNLEASHES ANOTHER TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR into Greenhouse 17. Filtered “rainwater” fills the half-eaten, hollowed-out mango in my right hand, and I force myself to drink. My left hand clasps a branch, lest I fall from my perch in this broadleaf tree.

  How long have I been here? More than twenty-four hours, surely. The sunlight has been incessant, as daylight lasts for over 200 hours at a time. Decades ago, Bioengineers made sure the bases’ genetically modified plants could handle the Moon’s extended cycle of light and dark, saving the Agriculture Department vast amounts of power.

  With such exposure, I dare not touch bare soil until nightfall. I’m about to burst with frustration, split apart like an overripe fruit. Stuck in the canopy, I’m not getting any closer to my brother. As soon as the sun sets, I’ll head out, find a HeRP—maybe Yinha has an extra?—and download a set of computer science textbooks. Cygnus’s message may be in a programming language. Greek autocode, perhaps.

  My food, which consists of raw fruit and the occasional nut, seems to go in through my mouth and straight out via diarrhea and vomiting. I’d have preferred to hide in Greenhouse 22, where Umbriel and I used to tend berry bushes, apple trees, and salad greens, but the security pods there would find me easily. InfoTech hates sending pods into the tropical greenhouses like this one; the heat and humidity cause them to malfunction, and the liters upon liters of artificial rain can knock them to the muddy ground.

  It’s so hot that I’ve ditched my helmet, hanging it on a cluster of bananas, and rolled up my sleeves and pant legs. Raw scrapes mar my skin, injuries sustained while crawling between trees to hide from the Agriculture workers, some of whom I recognize. I’m horrified to see the bloody skin around my wounds turning scarlet and even yellow. It burns in some places and itches in others.

  I have to leave. Every new wound, every creeping infection, will make it harder for me to help Cygnus, whose pain is immeasurably worse than mine.

  Navigation in this greenhouse was difficult at first, as the plants here aren’t partitioned by species. Rather, in any given area, the overstory consists of a tall tree species and the understory of various shrubs, many of which produce edible fruit but have poisonous leaves. Some plants, whose ancestors were saved before Earth’s rainforests disappeared, have healing properties, most of which base scientists are still exploring. Because of this greenhouse’s importance—and its dangers—only experienced Agriculture workers are assigned to work here. Umbriel and I were never allowed in.

  Day finally shifts to night, and I shimmy down to the base of the tree. When I hit the ground, my legs crumple underneath me, and mud soaks through the seat of the Militia trousers I’m wearing. I’ll be useless until I’ve rested for a few hours.

  Sleep, then find a HeRP.

  Inching on my elbows like a worm, I find a nook sheltered by a fig tree’s spreading branches and bounded on the sides by a clump of weedy vines with scarlet seeds. Red: aposematic coloration. A warning sign to potential predators.

  Poison. The panic I feel is cold. My heartbeats come quiet and slow like distant waves. Could it already be too late? Maybe I’m just exhausted. . . . A few hours’ rest, and then I’ll go ask Yinha for a HeRP. If I don’t touch those plants, I should be fine . . .

  I grow dizzier by the second. By the time I admit that I’m deluding myself, my consciousness has all but drifted away.

  * * *

  “What on this side of the sun are you doing here?”

  My sleepy pulse picks up, and sweat beads on my face—which, I realize in a rush of dismay, is exposed to the air. I’ve been discovered. This could end my career as a fugitive and begin my new one as a prisoner. I force my eyes up. The tiny movement taxes my ocular muscles and takes far longer than it should.

  A middle-aged man stands before my hiding place, his nitrile-gloved hands in the air. His handscreen’s light shines through the rubbery purple covering. He wears airtight laboratory goggles and a transparent face mask over his nose and mouth. A thick black mustache, quivering like the rest of his body, blankets his upper lip. It’s the most prominent feature of his round face.

  “Get away from those jequirity, miss!” he says, pointing to the vines at my side.
I take another look at them: they’re weighed down by scarlet seeds with black stripes. The clear plastic bag dangling from his hand is filled with them. “Inhaling just milligrams of the fumes could kill you!”

  He’s more concerned about my safety than my identity? Puzzled, I gather my strength, roll like a log away from the jequirity, prop myself up on my elbows, and take a better look at the man. His skin is bronze, his small eyes a light shade of brown that borders on gold. He wears robes dyed black, a color not associated with a civilian residential compound. Haphazardly pinned to his chest is the flask-shaped badge of . . . the Chemistry Department?

  So. He’s as much of an intruder here as I am. I can almost feel a cool breeze blowing the sweat off my skin.

  Looking anxiously back and forth, the man kneels, facing me, and stows his left hand in a pocket to cover his handscreen. “I know you,” he whispers. “Sage.” Slowly, he flashes the Dovetail sign, thumbs interlocked and fingers spread. “You’re alive.”

  Barely. A wave of nausea rolls through me, and I scrunch my eyes shut.

  “I’m Asterion Epsilon.” The man pats my shoulder with a big, soft hand, the way I imagine a father would comfort his daughter. But my body seizes up nonetheless. I’ve never liked physical contact with strangers.

  Is Asterion a stranger, though? Something about him seems familiar, and it’s more than Yinha’s hasty words in Defense about him running in the next election.

  He goes on: “I’ve wanted to meet you ever since my daughter told me about a sagacious fifteen-year-old in her trainee class. Possibly the youngest Militia recruit in history.”

  History. An icy sensation creeps up my spine, vertebra by vertebra. “Vinasa,” I whisper. The first girl who showed me kindness in Militia training, brilliant and beautiful; she aspired to learn from the past and improve our society in the future. But she lost her life in a needless spaceship crash. It’s been more than a year, and I don’t think the shock has ever faded.