Dove Alight

by Karen Bao

  The volume of traffic in and out of this room is higher than the ICU’s. Yinha and my old Militia friends stop by, as do people I haven’t talked to since Primary. I bear their presence with a smile until it grates on me—then I call a Medical assistant to shoo them away and dose me with sleeping meds.

  One evening, the carousel of visitors brings someone I’ve hoped to see since I regained consciousness. Alex has returned.

  When he staggers in, slack-jawed and bleary-eyed, I’m standing with my hands against a wall, digging my heel into the floor to stretch my calf. Something tells me that forces other than lack of caffeine are responsible for his exhaustion.

  I nod at him in greeting.

  “Good evening to you too, Dove Girl,” Alex says. “I’m relieved to be back. Couldn’t take it over there.” He flops into the chair behind the Medic’s desk; his head droops, and he stares at the ceiling. “Most people are sad over someone. All of ’em are livid about the Batterers paving over Saint Oda.”

  I sit on the edge of my bed to face him, stretching my hamstrings now.

  “Coordinator Carlyle ignored me. His wife wanted to know every detail about what happened to . . . to Wes. Me? I tried not to get riled up when the Batterers knocked over the lighthouse where he and I used to go climbing. But two days ago, the developers started building a rig right over my parents’ old wheat field—that was the last straw, and I don’t mean that as a pun.”

  I nod, pretending to understand the depth of his pain. But I can’t. I still have a family and a recognizable homeland.

  “Earth’s got nothing for me,” Alex says softly. “Nothing. I don’t want to live in a place where I see what’s missing instead of what’s there. I’d rather be here, where things can get better, not worse.”

  My mouth hangs open. Why would someone from a beautiful Earthbound city choose to live on the Moon instead? Somewhere without the salty ocean and the sun on his face. “But you lived in Saint Oda for so long,” I say. “There must be things worth remembering.”

  Alex takes his paper notebook out of his jacket pocket. The cover hangs on to the spine by a corner; several pages flutter away, but he catches them in midair. “Every memory I need is in here.”

  “What do you plan to do with that?” I ask.

  “Remind people of everything we’ve lost.” Alex leafs through the notebook, reading over his own words. His narrow, irregular scrawl fills page after page. “So that a war like this one doesn’t happen again.”

  “That’s . . . optimistic,” I say. Both of us have seen and done too much to believe that “peaceful” is humanity’s default setting. “Do you think you can change people? Even the best of them turn to force when they have everything to lose.”

  Alex snaps the book shut and fixes his eyes on me. “Then we ought to create a world where they don’t have to worry.”

  * * *

  Forty-seven hours later, the Girl Sage leaves Medical, withered but alive. That peaceful world Alex was talking about? We’ll make it real, starting today in the Free Radical’s Atrium. The vast dome is bustling again after months of fearful stillness.

  “Remember, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.” Umbriel walks behind me, arms extended, ready to catch me should I stumble on my way up the stairs. Andromeda, who waits for me on the Atrium’s second level, offered me a hoverchair like Rose’s for the ceremony, but I declined.

  With each step, I fight gravity—and grow more conscious of the several thousand eyes watching my struggle. Alex stands guard at the top step, Yinha across from him. He nods to Umbriel and me, a somewhat betrayed look on his face. Had Wes lived, he might have helped me climb the stairs. Or we might have clutched each other to keep from falling. I know Alex isn’t the only one picturing what could have been.

  I reel in sadness before it has a chance to surface. This day belongs to the people, I tell myself, and my parents, because their dream is finally a reality.

  Defiant, I look out at the audience. The Batterer troops are gone. They have returned to Earth and joined their comrades in tidying up the mess. Instead of their teal uniforms, I see Anka’s beaming face, Cygnus’s toothy grin, and Ariel’s starstruck eyes. Atlas Phi towers above his neighbors, sobbing for everyone to see. Even Caeli Phi has stepped out, escorted by guards from Dovetail.

  Noticeably absent are Yinha and Bai, the latter of whom is in Medical. According to his sister, Bai ingested jequirity seeds after watching the footage from Base I. I can’t decide if Yinha’s alerting Medical and saving his life was cruel or kind. Even though he was just a pawn in the Committee’s plans, Bai’s existence will always remind me that Wes is no more. And every mention of Base I will remind Bai that he’ll live forever in people’s memories, but in infamy.

  Callisto, who stands behind her mother, nods to me as I take the stage. The Lunar Republic’s new flag lies folded in Asterion’s arms. Elections won’t happen for another six months at least, but the new independent presses predict he’ll win a legislative or executive position. Asterion unfolds the flag lengthwise; Andromeda and I each hold one corner. Together, we fling the heavy cloth over the edge and let all thirty square meters of it unfurl.

  Five gold stars in a circle on a silver background. A red star in the center commemorates the bloodshed on the Singularity—that was Anka’s idea. Some journalists labeled the flag “dazzling to a fault” and “extravagantly optimistic,” but they missed the fact that we need “dazzling” and “optimistic.” By the volume of the citizens’ cheers, the wattage of their smiles, I know we’ve picked the right design.

  Here you go, my friends. Silver, red, and gold ripple against the blank white Atrium wall. Here’s your sunrise.

  THE OTHER BASES STAGE THEIR OWN RATIFICATION services, and they require my attendance for each ceremony. Within a week, I’m piloting a Pygmette en route to Base I, Yinha next to me, in case I bungle a maneuver in my compromised state. Andromeda wanted me on the Omnibus with the rest of the Dovetail entourage, which left the Free Radical this morning, but I need the autonomy. Steering my own ship gives me control over some portion of my life.

  As we coast above Mare Tranquillitatis, a black basalt plain ringed by bumpy peaks, Yinha taps my shoulder. “Can we touch down for a second? I want to show you something.”

  Yinha’s surprises never fail to astonish, so I nod yes and land the Pygmette in the middle of the sea, near a small area sectioned off with steel wires. We taxi over, following Yinha’s directions, suit up, and step outside.

  “The first human ever to set foot on the Moon,” Yinha says. “Almost four centuries ago now. This is all he left behind.”

  We walk to the steel fence. The first footprint is bigger than my two feet put together. It looks like a striated bacterium, an engorged version of the simplest, oldest organism. There’s also a rectangular plaque and a narrow circular hole where some kind of staff or flag used to be.

  That was the beginning. Before me lies evidence of the first human ever to tread on regolith, to brave the vacuum-sealed desert that we call the Moon. Centuries later, his legacy gave the bases’ founders hope—the knowledge that they could send up massive numbers of people, could build and settle here.

  But the original Committee soon laid down the law. They did it to safeguard everyone from the hostile outdoors. But from there, they made the short leap to ruling, fighting, and murdering, all in the name of survival.

  We can’t let that happen again. Protecting people from nature is not an excuse to prey on them. The Moon’s new leadership, whoever it comprises, has to remember that distinction. In the years ahead, I’ll do everything possible to remind them.

  I look down at the footprint—so innocuous, so unaware. This ancient Earthbound man wouldn’t be able to comprehend the era he ushered in. But it’s not his fault that so much destruction happened here. It’s not any one human’s fault.

  Still, I wond
er.

  Should we ever have come?

  Epilogue

  FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

  ACROSS THE MOON, THERE WAS PLENTY MORE public mourning, followed by plenty of public fanfare. After my initial victory lap around the five bases, I participated in neither, drawing concern and criticism from the newly freed citizens of the bases—I mean, of the Lunar Republic.

  My silence lasted six months, which seems short in retrospect but was long enough to concern people. They couldn’t understand why I felt so empty, why I had nothing to say about the Earth’s peaceful state, the Moon’s improving quality of life, the countless fictionalizations that people wrote about my ordeal.

  Truth was, talking about anything other than death—the thousands of deaths, including Wes’s—seemed frivolous. I couldn’t contemplate the subject without grief blocking off my throat. Not even Alex, Wes’s other mourner, could get a response out of me. What could I have said? Rumor holds that Wes watched me run toward the Destroyer, even as the copper drone cloud descended upon him and pumped him full of poison. That he wanted me to be the last thing he ever saw.

  I wouldn’t know; I could never watch the footage.

  Year by year, the pain ebbed away. Eventually, there came a day when someone made me feel as I never thought I’d feel again, and it didn’t seem like an insult to the memory of a boy I loved when I was seventeen. So the man became my family, and now I have someone with whom to spend the many years Wes wanted me to live.

  And my husband isn’t all. These days, a smaller set of fingers warms the spaces between my own. Their owner walks by my side now, her strides exactly half as long as mine.

  Dawn, my little light. Biology says I bestowed life upon her, but in my soul I know it was the other way around. She gave me the strength to do ordinary things again, and that makes her extraordinary.

  As we leave the light-filled Primary lobby, Dawn waves good-bye to her friends. At six, she’s active and gregarious, with very specific clothing preferences. Today’s outfit is green overalls dotted with silver spaceships. Dawn’s short black hair curls at the ends; eight freckles zigzag across her nose on skin a shade darker than mine. Her father and I didn’t say a word when we first saw them; we simply looked at each other and understood. When she began biting her food with the sides of her mouth instead of the front, it became even clearer: Wes might have left the universe, but the universe hasn’t forgotten him.

  “Ms. Phaet! Thank you for getting those agar plates.” One of my tenth-year Primary students, Columba, catches up to us. She smiles down at my daughter. “I’m gonna grow the most diverse bacteria colony in class.”

  I laugh, shaking my head. Columba, a lanky girl of fifteen with multiple ear piercings, reminds me of my own overachieving tendencies. She waves to me and zips off on her maglev scooter, probably to get a head start on homework.

  Dawn and I step into the Free Radical’s colorful main corridor, which is now covered by murals that flow seamlessly together. They portray subjects as varied as a little girl blowing bubbles, a giant zipper with tulips in place of teeth, and the words YOUR VOICE HERE with an arrow pointing upward. Occasionally, we pass patrol officers leaning against the wall, watching passersby or admiring the artwork. They wear narrow-brimmed, bulletproof caps instead of helmets, leaving their faces open for observation. My daughter has never seen fully armed Beetles with gleaming bug-eye visors, and for that I’m grateful.

  “Can we see Auntie Anka’s big bird? Please, Mommy?” Dawn pulls me to a stop in front of my sister’s best-known mural: a dove in profile painted entirely with children’s handprints. My daughter was three when she covered her palm in silver paint and contributed a feather low on its left wing. Her uncle Umbriel gave her a piggyback ride when she was done.

  Now Dawn’s much larger, six-year-old hand hovers over that original print.

  “Look at how you’ve grown!” I say. “Now let’s get home before Daddy does. It’s a race!”

  We never linger long in front of the painting. I always come up with some reason to move on, before Dawn asks me why it’s called In Memoriam: Young Doves. She’ll notice the plaque someday, and read it. She’ll ask about the war, my role in it, and the “young doves” who I knew and loved before they died. I won’t know what to say. But I suppose it’s better to try to explain before she hears about it in history class.

  We pass the shiny new Transit Department, which has replaced Defense. There are queues out the door for base-to-base spaceship rides and the daily Moon-to-Earth shuttle. I catch a glimpse of Yinha, hugging a pale woman in a hoverchair whose platinum hair tumbles down her back. Rose now oversees base digital communication, keeping cyber-channels open for all kinds of traffic.

  Yinha strides toward a side entrance to Transit, notices me—or rather, notices my distinctive hair—and nods before stepping inside. Advancing into her late forties has made her features sharper, her steps quicker. As soon as the shuttle opened, Yinha stopped training Lunar Armed Forces recruits and became a pilot. Callisto Chi took over her old job. The population has swelled, and without the constant need for policing the halls and soldiering on Earth, enough people enlist of their own free will that service is no longer mandatory.

  While Yinha’s passengers wait, they examine a video advertisement for Eternal Light: Battle and Rebuilding in the North, a new essay collection by Alex Huxley about his experiences observing the reconstruction on Base I. Although I admire Alex’s work and feel endless pride in his success, I’ve decided not to read this new text. He accepts it. I’m “too close to the material,” as he would say.

  Dawn watches the screen intently as the next advertisement starts. “And there’s Uncle Umbriel!”

  My best friend, his curly hair as untamed as ever, appears on the screen in front of the cracked Pillars of Liberty on Base I. Old magnetic handcuffs, which the Militia used for routine arrests, bind his wrists and ankles. After hopping and weaving behind the columns, he slips them off, passes them behind his back, and steps into a glass tank that looks almost exactly like the one in which the Committee tried to kill us via drowning.

  The screen blacks out, leaving viewers to wonder if he will escape (spoiler alert—he will). DON’T MISS THE ULTIMATE UMBRIEL SHOW! say white letters across the screen. BUY YOUR TICKET TODAY! Though old memories sicken me every time I watch the routine—Dawn loves it, so I have Anka take her instead—he’s told me that every performance helps him heal, allowing him to break free of the Committee again and again.

  After Umbriel’s advertisement ends, Dawn and I walk onward to our apartment complex and take the cylindrical elevator to floor eighteen. My daughter opens our green front door with her thumbprint, just as I’ve taught her.

  Even though years have passed since I last saw one, I scan the foyer for security pods. As expected, nothing buzzes around the bamboo coffee table or the plush lime-colored couches. Dawn’s father thinks my lingering paranoia makes sense in light of my experiences, but I’m trying to kick the habit. InfoTech has debugged every Lunar residence; Cygnus oversaw the cleanup project to its completion, which got him promoted to Department Chief.

  “Mommy, will you help me fly?”

  At the sound of her voice, everything else in the world crumbles away—everything but my girl.

  “Always, Dawn.” To avoid spoiling her, I try not to indulge her when she begs for sweets or new toys, but I never refuse to do this.

  I lie back, my silver hair fanning out on the floor. Dawn sits on my shins and puts her palms on mine. Laughing, she rises up, lets go of my hands, and pumps her arms like wings. With me here, she has never fallen, and never will.

  Our apartment doors slide open. Unlike in years past, I feel elation instead of cold fear. Dawn’s father walks in, puts his shoulder bag down, and watches us. The love on his face fuels our flight, and I lift Dawn higher, making zooming noises with my mouth.

  “I’m flying, Da
d, I’m flying!” she cries.

  Our daughter’s ringing voice produces the loudest squeal of joy I’ve ever heard, and my eardrums revel in the sound. In the world we’ve built, there’s no need to shush her. And no limit to how high she’ll soar.

  How could I possibly thank everyone properly at the end of this half-decade-long journey? That’s a tough question. But as for who to thank? That’s easy. The following people have been guiding lights, and may they shine here like the stars they are.

  At Writers House: Simon Lipskar, thanks for your unwavering support and guidance as I grew from a clueless teenager into a less clueless adult. Genevieve Gagne-Hawes—with your editing, you’ve made the books so much better, and with your friendship, you’ve made my life so colorful. Cecelia de la Campa, with your patience and tireless work, you have helped Phaet fly across the world. Julie Trelstad, you showed me the wonders of Author Internet, and for that I am so grateful.

  At Penguin Young Readers Group: Kendra Levin, where would these books be without your careful eye and your faith in them? Ken Wright, it’s been wonderful to see the series grow under your watch. Julia McCarthy, you have made the paperback editions something to be proud of. Krista Ahlberg and Jody Corbett, I am so grateful (and relieved!) that you both copyedited the manuscript as carefully as you did. Marisa Russell, thank you for working tirelessly to get the books to as many readers as possible. Elyse Marshall, you are seriously a road warrior; I was so lucky to travel with you. Melinda Quick and Angela Cruise, thank you for bringing the books to schools and students. Thank you to Colin Anderson for breathtaking cover photography; to Cara Petrus and Maria Fazio for beautiful cover design; and to marketing and sales for reaching as many readers as we have.

  Author friends: Sabaa Tahir, Alison Goodman, Rachel Hawkins, April Tucholke, and Alwyn Hamilton—we toured together for only a few days, but you all made it an unforgettable experience. Tommy Wallach and Danielle Paige, may we have many more fun times together in the future! Arvin Ahmadi, thanks for the shots of much-needed wisdom. Christopher Paolini, as always, you are not only a wonderful friend, but also an example to me in so many ways.