War Surf

by M M Buckner

  A tray by the door held a fresh water sack and a bowl of oily gruel. I recognized the mess—Provendia’s protein-stew. The stuff was barely palatable, but I was so hungry, I ate it all, and I gulped the water to wash away the taste. Those busy NEMs were chewing through a lot of blood sugar, repairing my injuries, and they needed sustenance.

  My IBiS still showed the net not responding message, and other memos as well. I’d missed a telomerase infusion, a dental cleaning and a pedicure. It irked me how thoroughly the medical profession hamstrung my NEMs. Safety precaution, ha. I rubbed my teeth with my index finger and grumbled.

  At least the nanomachines had begun to heal my fractures. At length, I struggled to my feet. Sheeba had been right about my leg. With the fractures tightly bound, my leg didn’t hurt as much. I leaned against the wall and kept my weight on my good left leg.

  But acclimating to artificial gravity wasn’t so simple. Between the bizarre effects of centrifugal force and Coriolis, even turning my head threw me off balance. It was like standing at the bottom of an enormous bucket mat was swinging around in a fast, tight circle. Three times per minute, Verinne had said.

  Oh Verinne, if you could see me now. Only a few hours ago, I’d been winging across the firmament, cutting sleek pirouettes through a hail of missiles. Now I couldn’t even take a step without toppling over. But the glass man inside me was alive and kicking. Slowly, that Nasir-shaped lattice of silicon was mending my carbon-based flesh. I intended to master this artificial gravity shtick and find my Sheeba.

  So I hopped on one foot toward the nearest hand-painted W, toppled against the wall, caught myself, toppled again. It felt like riding a Tilt-A-Whirl. Now for the E. East meant prograde. The tank was spinning in that direction. Theoretically, when I moved that way, I would spin faster, and the increased centrifugal force would make me heavier.

  Picture me sweeping my arms out, lifting my right foot and squatting on my good left leg to spring. That’s how the guard found me when he pushed open the door. I gasped and tumbled.

  “Man, you gonna hurt yourself doing that,” said the imbecile guard.

  I bared my teem at this new agitator, another juve of course. This boy had a round baby face the color of caramel and a pair of huge brown eyes. His thick lips were wreathed in coarse black facial hair, and his wide, pimply nose wrinkled when he grinned. Bus, his eyebrows ran together in the middle. What a beauty.

  All the other protes wore standard-issue Provendia uniforms, but not this boy. He’d turned his gray coverall inside out so the fuzzy seams showed, then he’d hacked off the sleeves and rolled up the pant legs to show his thick hairy legs. He leaned against the oval doorjamb, scratching his elbow and watching me.

  “Give me your hand,” I ordered.

  The boy flexed his unibrow in surprise.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  He shrugged and pulled me to my feet. When the room whirled, I grabbed his shoulder. He was a few centimeters shorter than me, and that put his shoulder at a convenient level. Like his blond chieftain, this boy wore a braid down his back, but his hair was dark, and he’d woven colorful strands of plastic-coated wire among his plaits. Green. White. Red. Yellow. Very ornamental.

  “What’s your name?” I demanded.

  “I’m Juani.” The boy started guiding me back toward the blanket.

  “No, not that way. The door,” I said.

  “You need the toilet?”

  “That’s it. Yes, the toilet. How old are you?” I wanted to keep him in a subservient mindset.

  “I not supposed to tell you anything.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Who am I going to talk to?”

  The oval door had a raised sill, maybe ten centimeters above the floor. Anyone with two good legs could easily step over it, but for me, hopping on one foot, it was like an Olympic hurdle.

  “Jump. You can do it,” said Juani.

  He grasped me around my middle and lifted me. By leaning heavily against him, I managed to bound sideways through the door and land outside in the corridor. Liberty at last.

  But the corridor felt even more claustrophobic. Provendia’s engineers had wasted no space in A13’s floorplan. The corridor was so narrow, I had to turn sideways to avoid brushing against the walls. And it didn’t run straight—-it curved.

  “That way.” The boy pointed clockwise. “Four doors on the left.”

  “You wait here.” I pushed him aside and bobbed down the narrow corridor, staggering against one wall, then the other. Dead surveillance cameras drooped from the ceiling. Several meters down, I nearly tripped over a gaggle of children who had chosen that spot to congregate. Can you imagine, they were running up and down the public hall.

  “Whoa!” My crash sent them squealing in every direction.

  “Man, don’t turn your head so much. You go get dizzy.” Juani pulled me up and offered his shoulder again. “See that E? Lean into it. Yeah, there you go. You getting the idea.”

  My breath came in gasps as I hopped down the corridor, clutching Juani’s arm. We passed more prepubescent types, leaping about like popeyed toads. Some of them crawled on all fours, too young to walk. Soft little arms and feet, squeaky voices, oversized heads and noses like buds, such half-formed grotesqueries should be kept out of sight until they reached normal size.

  As we passed one oval door after another, I noticed scribbles and childish drawings scratched into the wall just at knee level. One of the toads must have run amuck with a penknife. Was there no discipline in this place? More and more, I leaned on Juani’s shoulder.

  “This the toilet.” He wrenched open an oval-shaped metal door and switched on the light. Yes, you could call the tiny cupboard a toilet. It had the correct gear, but it was microsized. Smaller man the lavatory on a jump-jet. Juani wrinkled his pug nose at me.

  “Very well, you can return to your post,” I said.

  I tried shooing him away, but he held the door and waited. I had no choice but to accept his assistance to hop inside, where I promptly banged my good knee on the metal toilet lid. Juani winced and made a comical face, then eased the door shut.

  Take it from me, using a prote toilet in an orbiting satellite factory qualifies as Reel. The flush made an eerie grating noise, the sink lacked a mirror, the tap yielded only a fine mist of disinfectant, and there were no wipes. The defunct surveillance camera grazed my temple. I growled at the roll of rough synthetic paper. Liam and his thugs must have commandeered the executive lavatory. Still, I scrubbed my hands and used some of the paper to clean my teeth.

  When I opened the door, Juani offered his elbow like an usher.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I said, trying and failing to navigate the raised doorsill on my own.

  Juani grabbed my waist and lifted me over the sill. “You can’t go past here. This the outside limit.”

  “I need exercise,” I said.

  “Uh-uh,” said Juani.

  I shoved him away and took a few hops down the hall. What could he do, shoot me? He had no weapons. He was barefoot. And, ye gilders, he was a teenager.

  “Stop, man. Don’t make me come after you,” he said.

  I laughed and kept hurtling along, sliding my hands against both walls, ignoring the dizziness and the rude little toads who got in my way and tried to trip me. Freedom went to my head like wine, and I seized one of the door levers. It was unlocked, and when the door fell open, I saw more youngsters and blankets on the floor. Before I could observe anything else, Juani’s bare foot landed a kick at the back of my good knee, and I went down hard.

  “By all the freaking gold-plated gods.” I cradled my throbbing broken leg.

  Juani grabbed the back of my longjohn and started dragging me along the floor. He hauled me back toward my prison, knocking my head against one wall and my injured leg against the other. The prepubescents scattered and giggled.

  I said, “Let go, zit-face. You’re killing me.”

  “Man, you a real sharp blade.”

&nb
sp; “I’ll pay money. I’ll get you a transfer, a better job, shorter hours, more perks. I’ll tell Provendia you helped me, and they’ll give you a pardon.”

  The boy didn’t slow down.

  “What do you want? I’ll get it for you. Please let me go.”

  He said, “Be calm, blade. You too sharp for me.”

  He dragged me back to my den, slammed the door, and in cruel retribution, turned off my incandescent lightbulb. My first attempt at freedom—nipped in the bud.

  Basking in cold dark misery, I pressed my ear to the fungus-covered door—hoping, I suppose, to hear Sheeba coming back. Why did Shee leave me alone to go traipsing after that twentysomething foreman? Would she massage his shoulders and tell him his aura “looks like smoke”? The possibility made me quiver.

  What I heard instead was Juani singing. Something about wagons and stars—his voice broke on the high notes.

  Molto frustration. How could I get that imbecile kid to let me go? Well, if a newbie surfer like Sheeba could beguile agitators, certainly I, with my centuries of worldly experience, could do it better.

  “Juani!” I yelled through the door. “Open up and let’s talk.”

  He opened the door a crack and poked his shiny nose through. “What does zit-face mean?”

  I sighed. “Use your brain. I’m a rich man. Treat me well, and I can do good things for you.”

  The boy’s single eyebrow knotted like a fuzzy worm. “You mean, like magic wishes?”

  “I can buy you things, okay? New clothes. Music discs. Air scooter. Just name it.”

  Juani glanced down the hall in both directions. His lean, muscled shoulders rolled up and down in the ridiculous inside-out coverall. Then he moved closer, and I noticed the startling clarity of his dark brown eyes. “Will you go tell me about Earth?”

  “Sure.” I nudged my shoulder into the door the way Sheeba had done, so Juani couldn’t close it. “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything. Tell me what she look like.”

  “Haven’t you browsed the Net?”

  “I mostly been in the factory.” He wiggled into a more comfortable position. “Once I went spacewalking. Yeah, I see Earth very completely then.”

  “You’ve been EVA only once?”

  He reddened and scrubbed his neck with his stubby fingers. “Sooner later, I go again. Tell me what she look like under the clouds.”

  The kid had a thirst for details. He knew almost nothing. What the hell, I told him how Earth’s sky was yellow instead of black and how all the people lived near the poles where the weather was mild. He asked ridiculous questions, like could we walk on the clouds. I told him the clouds held lots of useful chemicals that we harvested. He moved his mouth as if savoring the taste of my words. Ignorant cub, he amused me.

  So I kept going. I told him how everyone on Earth lived underground or under sealed domes, and how the best shops were always high in the towers, while the best music clubs were deep down where the protes lived. Juani needed to know what a shop was, and a tower and a music club. He wanted to know how many people lived on Earth, and when I told him 12 billion, he gave me a skeptical grin. That’s when I noticed his front tooth was missing. He kept rubbing his hairy legs and asking more questions.

  “Twelve billion people? Blade, you lie. How they remember each other’s names?” He sprawled on his belly in the corridor, leaned on his elbows and gazed up at me as if I held the light of the world. The soles of his feet were crusted soot-black. Soon, a few of the tiny toads joined him. They clustered around my door.

  I said, “Believe me, most people are not worth remembering. That’s why wars are so handy. Natural population control.”

  Juani said, “What does ‘natural’ mean?”

  “It means free. You don’t have to pay for it.”

  “I thought free had a big price,” he said.

  “Now you’re getting into semantics.”

  Playing guru was fun, but after a while, I’d had enough. “I told you about Earth. Now make yourself useful, and get my sat phone.”

  “What’s a sat phone?”

  I forced myself not to growl. Talking to this juve felt like biting through concrete. “Help me get out of here, and I’ll buy you a cybrary.”

  “What’s a—”

  I held up both hands. “Put it on pause. A cybrary is an earring that tells you the meaning of words. Game session over, okay?”

  Juani had a way of crinkling his eyes to slits as if he half suspected I was making everything up. He poked his tongue through the gap in his teeth and made a fluttering sound.

  I tried pleading. “Kid, I’m going nuts in here. I need exercise. A change of scene. A window for godsakes. Please let me out.”

  “What’s a window?”

  “Grrrr. Let me out, kid, or I’ll do something harsh.”

  Juani kicked his dirty toes against the wall. “Liam’ll bust me.”

  The infernal Liam. “What does your foreman think I’ll do, blow up the factory? Look at me. I’m utterly harmless.”

  “It’s because…” Juani chewed the corner of his mouth. “Gee say you come from that gunship.”

  “Not true. I have nothing to do with that gunship.” When I shook my head, the Coriolis made me dizzy.

  “Then why you here?” He and the toads watched me closely. My audience had grown. A little girl scooted close and touched my longjohn. A bright red amoeba-shaped birthmark stained half her face, and when she grinned, it bunched like a flower.

  Juani drew the girl into his lap. “You come to help us, blade?”

  I blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Sheeba and I were sightseeing.”

  Of course, Juani had to ask, “What’s sightseeing?”

  “Ye gilded gods. It’s something you do to pick up anecdotes for parties.”

  The little girl blinked as if I were speaking Martian, and Juani crinkled his eyes to slits. “Blade, you seriously unlinked. You want sights? I show you sights.”

  He waved the kids aside and helped me over the door-sill. Again he let me lean on his shoulder. Juani, the human crutch. His musky teenage smell was growing familiar, and I was even getting used to the Coriolis. He told me again the trick was to stay oriented, lean into the spin, and don’t turn my head too fast.

  This time out, he steered me counterclockwise around the curving corridor, and a whole troop of toads followed at our heels. The little birthmark girl skipped ahead, glancing back every second, till Juani said, “Keesha, you got chores?” She stopped in her tracks, scrunched up her tiny nose and nodded. Then she and the others drifted back the way they’d come.

  Oval bulkheads faced each other at regular intervals, all painted the same dingy beige and all coated with the same oily film of fungus, except where the graffiti artist had carved his drawings. Provendia must not have cleaned this place in ages. What musty air.

  To keep Juani’s favor, I didn’t risk trying another door lever, but I counted the doors for future reference. We had just passed the fourth pair when another corridor slanted to the left. Narrow and unlighted, it evidently led inward toward the tank’s core.

  “What’s that way?”

  “Ladder,” said the witless juve.

  “And where does the ladder go?”

  “Two,” he said. “We on One now. This deck have crew quarters and cargo bay. Ladder take us to Two.”

  For a kid who wasn’t supposed to talk to me, Juani had a loose lip. I knew A13 housed five decks, but I hadn’t studied the schematics all that closely. Our surf was supposed to be strictly EVA. So I kept Juani talking. “What’s on Two?”

  “I’ll show you,” he said, “if you can handle the ladder.”

  The ladder. Yes. As we approached the tank’s core, the dark corridor narrowed until my elbows rubbed against both scummy walls. Fungus blossomed along the welded-steel seams, and I couldn’t avoid touching it. Mega-distasteful. Space fungus was an eternal nuisance. It grew in every satellite, and no one knew how to get rid of
it. Early astronauts brought it from Earth, then it mutated to adapt to its new environment. Its smudgy black film proliferated in every orbiting station.

  The corridor terminated at a thick bulkhead door, which opened into a spooky round room. “This the ladder well,” said Juani.

  It smelled of stale musk overlaid with a very slight trace of sugar. Compared to the spaces I’d seen so far, this cylindrical well was a bit larger, probably three meters wide, but its ceiling hung low, and the inevitable surveillance camera dangled like a dead bat. A row of bare bulbs cast a dim glow, and the ladder stood out from the wall at a right angle, with one side rail bolted in. It took me a while to notice the small, round hatch above.

  Directly across from us lay another bulkhead door, marked with a large angular U drawn in reflective, silver tape.

  “That the Up door. This Down.” Juani pointed behind us with his thumb. A shiny silver D was taped to the door we’d just stepped through.

  “Every deck have a Up and Down,” Juani explained.

  This, of course, made no sense. The Up and Down doors lay directly across from each other on the same level. Left and right would have been better nomenclature. The doors were also marked with A’s, so that meant they were in line with Heaven’s axis of spin. Aha. I deduced a theory. “Juani, which way is the sun?”

  He grinned and pointed to the U door. “That brightside, man. That Up.”

  Exactly what I thought. Up meant the side of the tank that faced the sun. Down meant the side facing Earth.

  But when Juani began to mount the ladder in a direction perpendicular to the Up and Down doors, my brain fuzzed. Logically, I understood he was moving sideways in relation to Earth’s surface, yet every one of my senses shouted that he was climbing “up” that ladder.

  In fact, he scampered up the half dozen rungs like a circus performer, leaving me stranded at the base. I studied the ceiling just above my head. With a good strong jump, I could have touched it. When Juani saw me balancing on one foot, struggling to chin myself up to the first rung, he laughed and returned to help. The ladder terminated at a small, sliding hatch near the wall, but most of the ceiling was taken up by a second, larger hatch, with overlapping spiral leaves like the irising aperture of an old-fashioned camera.