Dove Alight

by Karen Bao

  Wes bites into his half with the side of his mouth. The tic is more awkward and endearing than I remembered. His face lights up when he tastes the pastry.

  “This holiday makes little sense to me, yet I’m rather enjoying myself,” he says.

  A tall girl in a red pantsuit approaches us, a huge pink lily pinned onto her short, asymmetrically cut hair. Her smiling lips are coated in dark red pigment. “You’re new here, eh?”

  “Yeah.” I pronounce the word like an Earthbound—yee-ah—not yah, like a Lunar.

  She tips her head back, laughing. Shiny hair swishes around her face. “Visitors are easy to spot, always craning their heads up to see how tall the buildings are.”

  A hovercar towing a glowing red banner decorated with golden symbols splits the air above us; it blares fast-paced instrumental music featuring a flute-like instrument. Wes and I clap our hands over our ears, and a frightened elderly woman on the street buries her head in her husband’s chest. He hugs her close, and they burst into giggles, like children.

  The girl laughs again, shaking her head, and turns to me. “Do your folks back home celebrate so . . . bombastically?”

  I shrug; I’m not sure what we’re celebrating.

  The girl blinks at me, confused. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed. You . . . look like one of us. Chinese, you know? This is the Moon Festival.”

  But I’m not one of you. My face heats up in embarrassment, even anger—anger at the Committee. Despite the way I look, I probably have less of China in me than the average Odan. The Committee ensured that by eradicating “ethnic rituals” in the name of “Lunar unity.”

  The girl points to the Moon. “That’s as full as it’ll get this year, see? Legend says there’s a lonely woman with a pet rabbit trapped up there for eternity, and her husband can only get a glimpse of her tonight.”

  Wes taps my elbow and shoots me a wicked grin. Embarrassed, I cross my arms and look down at my boots. The girl reads our faces, purses her lips, and diffuses the awkwardness by speaking again. “You know, the story came out of China centuries ago, yeah? The Chinese diaspora all over the world passes it down through the generations.”

  But I’m not from this world. With a stab of panic, I realize that I’ve all but given away my Lunar identity. How soon until the girl picks up on the clues?

  Wes covers for me. “We’re from a small city in northwest Europe. An island,” he rattles off. It’s only half a lie, and the girl seems to buy it. “This is new to both of us.”

  I scan the area for an escape route. A couple of stalls over, two flashes of green catch my attention. A man with eyes like spring shoots leans against the counter of an open bar. The red paper lantern light accentuates his unnaturally auburn hair, which I suspect is dyed or a wig. Several young women invite his attention with their eyes, but he approaches only one. Her pale face lit by a tipsy glow, she wears a tight, knee-length gold dress and oversized teal ribbon around her waist. Smooth golden hair encircles her neck like a silk scarf. Gold and teal—the Batterer flag colors, the colors suffusing Parliament Hall. This woman must work for the government.

  Could it be? Beckoning Wes, I move toward the green-eyed man, leaving the girl behind us, puzzled. Wes waves a good-bye over his shoulder, thanking her.

  By the stand ahead, the green-eyed man orders a bubbling pink drink for the woman and strikes up a conversation. Wes and I duck behind the corner of the bar and peek out from underneath the tent’s fabric, training our ears on the exchange.

  “. . . I got off work, and I heard that Parliament had a closed session, oh?” The man’s words come fast and slurred, spoken with a flawless Batterer accent. His familiar voice sounds like warm water running through my fingers. “So much has happened since I ducked into that cubicle this morning.”

  Lazarus Penny. Why is he on Battery Bay? My heart pounds faster. Roiling blood scalds my veins. Every muscle in me longs to break cover and attack him—if not for Wes’s steely grip around my wrist, I’d already have done it.

  But I can’t let months of hating the traitor strip away my wits. I focus all my attention on the Batterer woman.

  “Well, aren’t you behind on the news, eh?” she says. “The rest of the hostel’s staff couldn’t stop talking about how the Moon people landed here on the same day as the Moon Festival. The cleaning staff has been so distracted and sloppy.”

  “What a pretty coincidence, though all this must befuddle them.” Lazarus Penny sweeps a hand over the scene: food frying and spattering oil everywhere, blinding light shows, children chasing each other in circles. That hand tried to kill me. “Where in the hostel are they staying? Have you given them a lovely view—or put them on a lower floor to stave off vertigo?”

  That ruddy hair . . . Could he have been the aide giving me dirty looks in Parliament this morning? He knows we’re here, he knows we’re here—

  The woman giggles. “I couldn’t possibly tell you where we’ve lodged them. Security reasons, of course.”

  Why does he want our delegation’s exact location? Will he attempt to capture us? Kill us? Or is something even bigger on his mind? I slip a dagger into my sleeve. Wes squeezes my hand hard—it’s just short of being painful.

  “You’re still wound up from a long day at the concierge desk,” Lazarus says to the woman. “Bartender! A round of baijiu, please, for me and the lady.”

  The woman toys with a strand of hair that’s come loose from around her neck. “Oh, you’re too much of a gentleman—sorry, your name is . . .”

  The right side of Lazarus’s mouth pulls up, showing that single sharp canine. “What would you like it to be?”

  Winking at him, the violet-haired bartender deposits two glasses of clear liquor on the countertop. The blonde receptionist chugs hers and slams the glass down with an “Ah!”

  Lazarus brings his drink close to his face but doesn’t sip. His eyes shift across the scene. The woman might think he has a wandering eye that she must tame, but I know that he’s watching for threats.

  His eyes seem to catch something, and he retreats deeper under the awning. He whispers to the woman, making her laugh, and orders another drink for her. She guzzles it down like the first two. They start whispering again.

  What are we missing? Struggling to see and hear, I lean farther out of our hiding place, into the light. I’ll need to take a step forward if I’m to—

  “Don’t!” Wes yanks me back into the shadows.

  My dagger falls from my sleeve. Lazarus’s green eyes spot it—and narrow. Wariness contorts his face.

  I’ve all but lost us this round.

  “What’s wrong?” The woman looks in the knife’s direction, but her unfocused eyes fail to see it.

  Lazarus dumps his drink into a nearby potted plant, puts a slender hand to his forehead, and straightens to leave. While he’s distracted, I grab my dagger back. “The libations are clouding my mind,” he mutters, and strides away, just slowly and crookedly enough to pass for a drunk.

  The woman gathers her things and stumbles after him. “I have some painkillers at my apartment. It’s not far.”

  “Lead the way, madam.” Lazarus grabs her and places her in front of him like a human shield. They zigzag through the throngs of people, drunken giggles bubbling from her mouth. Wes and I tail them, but with difficulty: dancers waving long red ribbons almost run us over, and a baker holding a tray of the yellow cakes barely avoids dumping them on our heads. For a moment, we lose Lazarus and the woman—but just a moment.

  “There!” Wes points at two figures shuffling down a quiet block lined with row houses. Hopping from shadow to shadow, we tail them. Lazarus turns to look back, and we squat down behind a star-shaped bush before he glimpses us.

  Too soon, the woman hustles Lazarus up to her building’s front door and feeds a key card into a slot at eye level.

  “Fuse,” I swear.
>
  Wes pulls an insect-like bit of metal from his pocket and peels off the adhesive backing. “Batterer toy,” he whispers. “It’s a tracker.” Wes holds the bug to his heart as if praying. “Please work, little spider,” he says, and lobs it.

  It lands on the doormat in front of Lazarus, sticky side up, and adheres to his shoe when he steps forward.

  The woman slams the door behind them. Although she has shut out the city’s chaos, she’s locked herself in with a snake.

  WE MAKE OUR WAY BACK THROUGH THE Moon Festival celebrations, which rage on as brightly as ever. But they no longer fascinate me. They’re irritating distractions from the rapidly deteriorating situation.

  On our walk back toward the park, we try to warn no less than seven Batterer policemen, policewomen, and soldiers about Lazarus, the impending threat. The first three brush us off, and the fourth takes thirty seconds to explain that Battery Bay’s security apparatus is already overtaxed. The big city doesn’t have one-tenth the Committee’s surveillance capabilities, I realize with a jolt of frustration. It’ll be near impossible for them to root out an enemy in disguise.

  “I’ll go mad if they keep this up,” Wes mutters. “In all senses of the word.”

  Still, we keep trying; worry widens his gray eyes so that he looks half-crazed, and I shudder to think of the impression I must give off. My voice squeaks when I open my mouth, and my lungs seem to take two shallow breaths every second.

  The fifth and sixth Batterers—middle-aged foot soldiers—seem too exhausted to process our words, and the seventh—a young policewoman—tells us that a traitor would not have made it into the Batterers’ midst, given the city’s “advanced” security system.

  Beaten down, we slip into the forested park. Yinha meets us at the edge of the Odan camp. After we warn her about Lazarus’s presence, she hurries away to the hostel to pass on the message to Andromeda. Maybe the Batterers will listen to her.

  We’ve done all we can. In a rock garden near the camp, Wes and I sit on a massive boulder and watch Lazarus’s tracker feed on a Batterer rollout touchscreen. Three hours later, the blinking green dot hasn’t left the woman’s apartment building.

  The pounding anger I felt in the street has yielded to dull dread. Lazarus has probably pried Dovetail’s temporary address from the drunken receptionist, down to the exact room number at the hostel.

  Wes lets out a long sigh. “All this trouble because one rotten egg made it up there.” He means the Moon. “You know, Phaet, I want to go back. I was more useful to Saint Oda, and now the goings-on in the sky are . . . personal to me. What do you think?”

  He’s considered this for a long time. Although I want him back on the bases, I’m torn: he should stay where it’s safer, on Earth.

  Unsure what to say, I rest my eyes on the bonsai specimens to our right. Midget pine trees stand straight and proud, their needles as long as my eyelashes. The trunks of several elms zigzag in a Z formation; a juniper grows on a downward cascade so that its branches scrape the ground. Five spruces cluster together in one pot, their roots spread over pebbles and under moss.

  “I might be biased,” I confess.

  “Isn’t everyone?” Wes shrugs. “My mother wants me to stay here, to protect the Odans, and my father thinks the other Lunar agents can handle the Committee. And with that . . . turncoat here on Earth, well . . . I’ve got to eliminate him from the equation.” He grimaces at the mention of Lazarus. “But this sorry business of wondering if the other spies have gotten caught, wondering if you’ve gotten hurt or captured or . . . it’s got to end, Phaet.”

  So I wasn’t the only one.

  “You worried about me,” I say, growing aware of the heat radiating from his body. “I assumed you’d try to forget.”

  “Trying to forget someone is the surest way of remembering everything about her.” Wes shifts his position so that he can look me in the eye. “Doesn’t seem like you succeeded with me.”

  He’s right, and we both know it. I gather my knees to my chest as if trying to protect myself from—what, exactly? “Every time Alex opened his mouth, it reminded me of you,” I say, feeling like someone’s lit matches under my skin.

  “If he were eavesdropping on us, he’d feel terribly guilty or terribly amused.” Wes shakes his head, smiling. “I didn’t need help to remember what you sound like.”

  I can’t help but look at him in wonder.

  “Going to the pier before dawn, before the Moon set in the sky, and listening to the waves—that was enough.”

  His words are so gentle, so vulnerable. They have to be true. Unable to stop myself, I lean toward him, reaching for his hand, seeking shelter in his warmth. Our foreheads touch, and then the tips of our noses.

  Wes doesn’t kiss me, but he doesn’t move away either. “Phaet . . .” he whispers. “Is this the best idea?” The vibrations from each syllable pass through the air from his lips to mine.

  His words make me long to be normal. What if we could fall in love without fear creeping behind us, ready to pounce and steal our happiness? What if we could focus on something other than strategizing, fighting, and not dying when we’re together?

  “For survival, no,” I say, inching back. I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. “For life, for making the most of the time we have . . . who can say?”

  My mother taught me the difference between “surviving” and “living” when I was a child. She must have been talking about enduring Committee rule, keeping our heads down during the day and fearing that Beaters would visit at night. But she was also talking about times like this, when we’re with someone radiant and can only worry about his light fading.

  “What would you do if you had all the time in the world?”

  Besides spend much of it with you? The question surprises and then annoys me. Wes knows I always try to contain my optimism.

  But then I remember what Alex said on the ship: how his plan to tell stories in the future gives him a reason to live. How the promise of something keeps him going.

  “You mean . . . if my dozens of enemies don’t take me down before the revolution succeeds?”

  “Right—if the world becomes a friendly place, and you’re still in it. And you no longer have to fight to stay alive.”

  I shake my head, thinking of the classes I’ll never take, the technologies I’ll never invent. Of everything the war has erased from my future. “Hope is dangerous these days,” I say. “And too many of my dreams have died.”

  “That’s too bad.” Wes sounds disappointed. “Someday, I want to adopt some sort of Lunar public health measures on Saint Oda, but in a form closer to nature, one that people will accept. Maybe using concentrated alcohol from potatoes or rye to disinfect public facilities. Stuff like that. When we rebuild the city, we’ll have so much room to try new things.”

  Despite the chaos around him, Wes, like Alex, has still made time to concoct new ideas. Ideas for Earth, where he belongs. So what do I want? “If my family and I make it through . . .” Again, my mind draws a blank.

  “Didn’t you want to be a Bioengineer?”

  I give him an incredulous look—he remembers my old, pre-Militia ambitions better than I do—and burst out laughing. “Yes, I planned to design the ultimate nutrient-packed fruit, or the perfect assortment of gut bacteria so that kids in Shelter would quit getting diarrhea. And I wanted a Committee prize for it.”

  He chuckles, shaking his head, before touching an index finger to his temple. “This is a random thought—I don’t know where it came from. But you’re methodical and smart and good at taking care of people.”

  “I try.”

  “What if you became a teacher? In Primary Biology, or something like that?”

  Thinking of the fear that arrests me every time I speak in public, I shake my head and mock-zip my lips.

  “Yes, you’d be talking, but
to children. Besides, it seems like you’ve found your voice in the time you’ve been away. Telling Parliament off, telling your Dovetail friends what to do, telling me what you’re thinking.”

  To my surprise, Wes puts a hand on my upper back, and then drapes his arm across my shoulders. I tremble all over again in spite of its warmth.

  Is this the best idea? I want to return the question he asked earlier, but don’t want him to let go of me.

  “Do you think the change is for the better?” I ask, settling into his embrace, testing it out. All the muscles in my body loosen, and my heartbeat slows to a steady ka-thump, ka-thump. These days, I never feel so calm. Not even when I’m sleeping.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” Wes says. “But you seem to have less weighing you down now.”

  He’s right. Now that I’ve said what I needed to say, I feel as if my body’s made of air. Sitting and shivering on the boulder together, we watch the big gold coin of a moon set in the night sky. We speak rarely and quietly, only giving voice to our thoughts when lingering looks and clasped hands prove inadequate.

  Souls, like bodies, need space, and Wes’s doesn’t intrude on mine.

  As the sun’s first red rays peek out from behind a skyscraper shaped like a pyramid of pebbles, I begin to think that maybe this is it. People as different as the old couple on the street and the lonely lady on the Moon have experienced this, what’s between us. Something so common, and yet so special, because it finds people two at a time. I don’t try to capture the feeling in words—an impossible task—and neither does Wes. There’s no need. The air is full enough without them.

  AFTER SUNRISE, THE BOULDER WE’RE SITTING ON BEGINS to rumble. Battery Bay is firing up its engines, ready for its journey southward toward more secure territory. I lift my head from Wes’s shoulder, rub my eyes—and wish I hadn’t.

  Smog and clouds blanket the island city. Only the lemon-colored emergency lights continue to shine; all other colors have disappeared. Wheel-shaped hovercraft fly overhead, pulling illuminated banners behind them: PACIFIAN FORCE DETECTED NEAR HOKKAIDO. BATTERY BAY NOW ON YELLOW ALERT.