War Surf

by M M Buckner

  My boots skidded to a halt. “Anything, Shee.”

  Three decks below, Provendia’s gunfire started drumming Heaven’s hull again, and everyone tensed. While we held our breaths and listened to the vibration thudding through the walls, Kaioko came alive. She clawed her ears and shrieked hysterically. Then she slid off the table like a limp doll. Theatrics, I told myself, denying the truth. I didn’t want to believe Kaioko was sick. Why, only a few hours ago, we’d been debating philosophy.

  Geraldine caught the girl in both arms, and Sheeba checked her pupils for dilation. “Kaioko, wake up,” I found myself whispering under my breath.

  “She’s in shock. Juani, get a bed ready. And Gee, look at me. Look at me.” Geraldine was babbling obscenities, but Sheeba grabbed her wrist and forced the wench to make eye contact “You have to wrap Kaioko in blankets. Keep her warm. Do you hear me? Dip a clean cloth in water, and squeeze it into her mouth.”

  Geraldine wiped her runny nose and nodded.

  “Can you carry her by yourself?”

  “Yes,” Geraldine said.

  “Okay. Nasir, get the door.”

  Sheeba’s grave tone brought it home to me that Kaioko was critically ill. I sprang to hold the door while Geraldine lifted her unconscious wife. As they passed into sick-ward, Sheeba moved with the cool, quick confidence of a primo war surfer, while I hung back uselessly and watched.

  Geraldine lowered the girl’s limp body onto the mattress, and I wanted to shout a command to turn off this picture. This wasn’t the way the Reel should go. Rewind. Put it on pause.

  “Nasir.” Sheeba beckoned me to join her in the anteroom. She’d spread medical utensils on the counter. There were needles. Juani slipped quietly out to the ladder well and left us alone.

  Shee said, “Nass, we have to try something.”

  I mumbled, “Will she die?” Unfamiliar chemicals washed through my brain, stirring sympathetic urges.

  “Vlad thinks it’s a blood disorder,” Sheeba said. “Nobi and I both had Type A negative, so Vlad transfused Nobi with some of my blood, hoping the good would drive out the bad.”

  “What?” I replayed her words slowly through my brain. “That’s idiotic. You can’t cure a blood disorder that way.”

  “I know.” She ran her fingers through her short black-and-blond hair, and for the first time, I noticed the lines of fatigue in her face. My darling Sheeba. Dead on her feet.

  “Sit down and rest, dear. You’re grasping at moonbeams.”

  “We had to try something. I know it’s crazy. Half the things that heal people are crazy.”

  I drew her toward one of the benches in the waiting area, but she was too nervous to sit still. “Shee, this place is not a medical facility. And you, you’re a wonderful therapist, but dearest, you’re not a doctor. We should go back where we belong and leave this to the specialists.”

  She rifled through a cabinet and found some plastic tubing. “You have those nanomachines in your blood, right?”

  My jaw moved, but my voice failed. Sheeba and I never mentioned my bioNEMs. It was a forbidden subject because Shee thought nanotech was “unnatural,” another one of her fizzy notions, like refusing to suppress her ovaries.

  “Dearest, I know you don’t approve—”

  “I’ve changed my mind, Nass. Anything’s worth a try. Those nanothings may heal this…despondency.” She blew through one of the tubes to clear out the dust. “Will you give me some of your blood? It might work.”

  Precious child, she’d finally realized she needed NEMs to protect her health. But would my NEMs migrate to her body through a blood transfusion? Could it be mat easy? A thought flurried through my brain: copyright violation, capital crime. I ignored it.

  “Will your’ she said hopefully.

  I cradled her face in my hands. “Dear Shee, yes. Take all you want.”

  First, she pricked my finger and ran a tiny scarlet drop through the nanoscope. Then she waggled her shoulders like a happy young animal. “I knew it, Nass. This is truly karmic. You have Type O blood.”

  “What does that mean, Shee?”

  “It means,” she said, throwing her head back, “you’re a universal donor!”

  “Sounds philanthropic,” I said uneasily.

  She gave a smile that warmed me to the marrow. Then she rolled up my longjohn sleeve, put a tourniquet around my biceps and slapped the inside of my elbow to make a vein stand out Her face glowed with the war surfer’s bliss, and I couldn’t help but think, despite her short training and my long experience, that we were both lost babes when it came to medical procedures.

  I tried to sound calm. “Take a big dose, dear heart. You’ll need a lot. Are you sure the NEMs will migrate this way?’

  She beamed. “Where’s your faith?”

  When she held the old-fashioned needle up to the light, I winced. It looked awfully long. “Is it clean?” I asked.

  Sheeba made a clownish face and plunged it into my vein.

  19

  I KNOW WHO YOU ARE

  “Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.”

  —FRED ASTAIRE

  The average executive body contains five liters of blood. Sheeba assured me of this as she siphoned one of them from my right arm into an empty plastic water sack. Why precisely one liter? There was nothing precise about it. We were walking on the murky waters of faith healing. Shee had skipped her blood theory classes because the information was “too dry,” she said. Vlad’s quack idea that good blood might chase out bad sprang from lunacy, ignorance and sheer desperation. Still, there was a slim chance my NEMs would migrate to Sheeba’s body and jump-start her immune system.

  ‘Take more, dear. You need lots and lots.” I watched the wine of my veins slowly inflate the little plastic sack.

  “Nass, I’ve never drawn blood before, but I think taking too much could make you light-headed.”

  No problem. I didn’t mind resting on this comfortable steel table while Shee hand-fed me savory chili—until I recalled we were streaking through space in a disintegrating fuel can. I sat up quickly, reeled with dizziness, then lay back down.

  “Very well, dear. Perhaps one liter will be just enough.”

  Juani came dashing through the anteroom, grinning. His black braid swung like a pendulum. He waved a thumbs-up sign and raced into sick-ward. “At least someone’s gotten good news,” I said. Then my eyelids fluttered heavily. Sleep was dragging me under.

  Sheeba said, “What’s got him so blissed? He’s been talking to Liam.”

  When she started toward the sick-ward door, I opened my eyes just in time to grasp her sleeve. “Don’t go in mere, dear. You haven’t had your NEMs yet.”

  She gently released my fingers, settled my blood-tapped arm back on the table, then leaned to check the plump, crimson bag dangling below my elbow. When Juani came racing back through, he carried a white EVA suit draped over his shoulder, the one Geraldine had been wearing, and he spun the white helmet on his fingertip like a globe.

  “Juani,” said Sheeba, “you can’t go spacewalking. You get vertigo.”

  The boy straightened up and stuck out his chest “Be calm, Sheeba Zee. I going!”

  Then the air went thick, and my vision wobbled. The fluorescent light illuminated Juani’s teeth like a wall of pearly stones with a single black gap at the center. Dark, warm and damp, mat gap opened and opened till it devoured the whole universe.

  I awoke much later with a raging thirst.

  My temples throbbed. I couldn’t remember where I was. My teeth tasted minty fresh, but my body exuded a god-awful smell. I sat up and sniffed my armpits. Whew. My dermal hygiene NEMs were seriously off kilter. A water sack lay beside me, so I sucked it down. After several minutes, I recognized the fluorescent light. This was the anteroom to sick-ward.

  “Hello. Anyone?”

  No answer. I went to the sink, flipped open the faucet and cupped my hands under the thin jet of disinfectant. Then I
unzipped the front of my longjohn and rubbed my pits and groin. How had I gotten so dirty? My thumbnail screen displayed a long menu of strange messages. Not only my dermal hygiene NEMs had gone off-line, other classes of NEMs had crashed, too. What’s more, the Net was not responding. But why? For the life of me, I couldn’t remember.

  Oddly, the NEMs in charge of my false dental implants showed mega activity. With no doctors’ orders, the little fiends had gone into a flossing frenzy, and my breath reeked of spearmint. But none of this made sense.

  I felt my forehead for fever, but my temperature seemed normal. Then I checked the status of my mnemonic NEMs—and got a bizarre reading. Some of my implanted memory sticks had been switched to edit mode, and the NEMs were making confetti out of my short-term recall, “Stop that.” I clicked through the prompts, trying to get control, but the little buggers wouldn’t respond.

  Then, like a light shutting off, I forgot about them.

  The door to sick-ward was closed, and no noises filtered through. Dimly, I sensed that Sheeba was in there helping someone whose name I should know. Someone who’d fallen ill. The idea needled me, but I couldn’t quite visualize the person’s face. I considered knocking on the door. Then something itchy tugged at my arm—a thick wad of bandage was taped inside my elbow. Seeing it triggered a spotty recollection. Sheeba had taken my blood.

  Almost instantly, the recollection dissolved, leaving behind a troubled void. I reached for the water sack, hoping another drink would clear my head. But it was empty. Then I slid off the table and had to grab the counter to stabilize myself. Spots of bright color flashed across my retinas. Why did I feel so weak and thirsty?

  The water sack was empty, so I set off to look for more. In the ladder well, the fungus blossomed in great bristling flower heads. When had I passed this way before? My sense of time waxed and waned like surf. A silver D gleamed from the opposite door. D for Down. But that wasn’t down.

  Then a recollection flickered like a splice of Reel. I saw dying employees. They lay motionless, speechless. Rows and rows of thin mattresses stretched away to an impossible distance, and I imagined wandering among them, seeking a way out, but the employees didn’t notice me. Their bloodless faces held no expression, and their vacant eyes didn’t blink. A taste of lychee nuts welled up in my mouth, and the faces turned in my direction. They were real. This wasn’t a dream. Those dying workers were on this deck—in sick-ward.

  I fled down through the safety lock and descended to Three.

  The galley was deserted, but I found a full water sack and took a long, grateful drink. Something had frightened me; what was it? Already, the memory had fragmented. With a small rush of pride, I recalled how to work the can opener, located a clean bowl and heated some stew. But something kept nagging me. Wasn’t there a mystery to solve?

  My chili came out tepid. I took a few famished gulps, then carried it with me, eating while I walked. Juani’s generator closet lay vacant. He’d stowed his toolbox away, and the empty cistern echoed when I tapped it. But who was Juani?

  In the drying room, abandoned ovens gaped open. A bag of hard crackers had spilled across the floor, and my boots crunched through the crumbs.

  “Anyone here?”

  I took my bowl of chili down through the safety hatch to Two. In the forlorn ladder well, thick new metallic patches covered a badly damaged door. This spooked me. Was I getting Winny’s mutated Alzheimer’s? I touched the metal door, then pressed my ear to the steel. No whistling air loss. No thudding boots on the other side. Only the stillness of space.

  I cycled down to One and roamed among the deserted crew quarters, eating stew as I went. Only my slurps broke the chilly silence. Long ago, I’d spent time here as a prisoner—had I dreamed that? The arc of wedge-shaped closets held no chairs, desks, bookcases, no Net connections. Not a single window anywhere. Only blankets scattered on the floors and graffiti etched into the walls.

  Both ends of the curved corridor terminated at steel doors marked cargo bay. But the doors were not merely locked and welded shut, they were obstructed by towering stacks of steel bed frames, tables and straight-backed chairs, lashed together with chains. So mat’s what Heaven’s furniture was used for—barricades. I added my empty chili bowl to one of the stacks, then climbed back up the ladder to Deck Two.

  Halfway up, a thunderous noise shivered through the walls. That was gunfire. The ladder shook, and spikes of hot terror sizzled through my nerve endings. As I cycled through the lock, the hull clanked with brutal contortion.

  Abruptly, the concussions ended, and I drew a relieved breath, hardly knowing why. The solar plant’s vicious light forced me to shield my eyes, and I hurried through to the ops bay. Around the comer lay an airlock. Instinct drew me there. Juani had taken my white suit to go spacewalking, but why? The boy had a front tooth missing. Memories brightened and faded like cinders in a strong wind.

  Then, like a bolt, I remembered. Juani went with Liam to the gunship. No, I was supposed to go with Liam.

  They’d gone for Vlad, but Vlad wasn’t on the gunship—I’d lied about that. My crewmates had taken him. And because of my lies, Juani would be captured and euthanized. He might already be dead.

  But I was supposed to go mere, not Juani! I never meant to harm Juani! How did this fiasco happen? I never used to fumble like this. All those error messages. The NEMs were screwing with my memory.

  Abruptly, I forgot again.

  In a stupor, I sat on the floor, where someone had left a flashlight. I picked it up and peered into its reflective cone. What had I just been thinking? Plans and intentions connected like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. I touched my face—and felt puckered flesh. Pouches sagged under my eyes. I didn’t need a calendar to tell time. My face was a clock. This slackening skin meant at least seven missed telomerase treatments. Seven days in Heaven—it sounded like the title of an old movie.

  Then a new recollection glowed, clearer than the others. I wanted Liam to die. That’s right, I’d tricked him to go after Vlad. And thanks to my lies, he’d taken the only two decent space suits in Heaven, the only helmet with a satellite phone, the only working thruster—the only way out.

  My lies had killed Sheeba.

  Curse my cunning soul. In a fevered rush, I went tearing back through the solar plant, where the dazzling light almost made me trip. I stumbled toward the ladder well as scattered memories came hurtling back. I had to do something. Find Sheeba. Figure another way out.

  Just as I bounded into the well, Geraldine leaped off the ladder and knocked me flat. She straddled my chest and pinned my arms down. Tears and mucus dripped from her face, and she screamed, “Murdering commie!”

  I threw her across the ladder well. I was, after all, a healthy adult executive, whereas she was a teenager.

  On the other hand, she had a hammer. She whipped it out of her pocket and pointed the claw end toward me, circling sideways on bent legs as if she meant to lunge.

  I yelled, “What the freak’s got into you7’

  “You murdered Kai-Kai” she blubbered.

  Little Kaioko was dead? I didn’t have time to think about that. Geraldine’s clawhammer demanded all my attention. “People were dying on this satellite before I came here.”

  “I know who you are,” she growled. Then she hurled her hammer end over end, and though I ducked, it caught me in the shoulder.

  “Ow.” I spun and slammed into the wall, then slid to the floor clutching my wound.

  Geraldine was on me in a second. She grabbed my hair with both hands and slammed my head against the wall. Then she kicked me in the chest and knocked out my wind. “Killer. Killer. Killer,” she chanted.

  I retrieved the hammer, and when her bare foot came reeling toward my face, I smashed her anklebone. She shrieked and hopped away, holding her ankle in both hands, screeching like a baby.

  “Keep away from me,” I said.

  “I taking you up there, commie. You gonna see what you did.” She let go of her bleeding
ankle and stood facing me with her brawny legs spread wide. Ripples of salty sweat crusted her gray uniform, and a sneer warped her features.

  “I was going up in any case,” I said, holding the hammer like a talisman to ward her off. “You wait here till I cycle through the lock.”

  “Don’t try to hide. No place here you can hide from me.”

  I rolled my shoulders with dignity. “Why on Earth would I bother to hide from you, prote?”

  Climbing the ladder, I kept the hammer pointed toward Geraldine to make sure she didn’t follow too closely. After I cycled through the lock to Three, my plan was to disable the upper hatch so she couldn’t follow. But I couldn’t figure out how. When Geraldine started cycling through, I hotfooted up the ladder toward Four. She sprang out of Three’s lock just as I climbed into Four’s, and she sprinted up the ladder with a murderous expression. I barely managed to close the hatch in her face.

  In Four’s well segment, I tried to jam the hatch with a wad of fungus, but it crumbled to bits. Geraldine was already cycling through. She would be on top of me in seconds, so I bounded into the anteroom and stopped in front of the sick-ward door. I didn’t want to go any farther.

  The door stood open a crack. I could see the yellow light. “Sheeba?”

  There was no sound. I stood rock still raising my hand to knock, hoping Shee would come outside. “Sheeba?”

  Then Geraldine came barreling up and butted me headlong into sick-ward. I tripped over the sill and slid, face-first, across the septic floor. “Yaaah!” I leaped up and swatted the filth off my face with both hands. It was that fungus. Then I caught a glimpse of white beds and whipped away to shield my eyes from the sight.

  But Geraldine blocked my escape and spun me back around to face sick-ward. “There,” she said and pointed.

  I didn’t want to see. I fought her and covered my eyes. “Sheeba, help me.”

  “Your girlfriend ain’t here,” said Geraldine.

  When I tried to move around her, she kneed me in the stomach and made me face the cots. Two rows of narrow white mattresses with threadbare sheets and thin gray blankets. There were fewer than I expected. They were bound to the floor with thick canvas straps—as if they might fly into the air at any moment. But the cots were empty. Except one. A small chemical light cube had been Velcroed to the wall above this one particular cot, and one wasted invalid lay under the blanket, staring straight up at the ceiling. Kaioko. Still breathing, barely.