by Beth Goobie
Stiffening, Nellie fought the cry that rose up her throat.
“Go on,” said the colonel, his fingers digging into her shoulders. “The Goddess gives and the Goddess takes away. It is not for you to claim what belongs to the Goddess.”
Slowly Nellie filled cabinet MK5DZ with two years of memories of her best friend — food fights in the cafeteria, giggling chats while watching Star Heat, successful maze runs they’d accomplished as a team.
“Done?” asked the colonel, squeezing her shoulders. Nellie nodded, and he squeezed them again. “Remember, cadet, we’re all stars from the heavens, trapped for a time in human form. It’s our duty to shine with the Goddess’s light until She decides to release us back to the stars.”
“Released,” whispered Nellie. Not dead. Dead dead de —
“Now, close all drawers to MK5DZ, lock it and put it away,” said the colonel.
A sleepy wave passed through Nellie’s brain as the filing cabinet sank out of sight, deep into her mind. For a long blurred moment she seemed to be hovering in limbo, some gray murky place, and then she opened her eyes to find herself walking down the hall that led back to the gym office. A thick dullness lifted from her brain, and she realized Col. Jolsen was right behind her. Creepy-crawlies skittered up her spine.
“Good work, cadet!” said the colonel as they entered the gym office. He clapped her heartily on the shoulder. “Only four hits in that free-for-all. I’ll have to put a commendation on your file. Now off to the showers with you.”
Col. Jolsen? thought Nellie, feeling suddenly dizzy. Why was she in the gym office talking to him? Wasn’t she supposed to be in Weapons with Lt. Neem?
“C’mon, Kinnan, off to the showers,” repeated Col. Jolsen, giving her a playful shove. “You smell like you need it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Nellie, and then she was passing through the office doorway and heading across the empty gym toward the girls’ locker room. She felt funny, her throat thick with something she couldn’t name and her brain seemed lopsided, as if it was spilling down the right side of her head. Behind her came the sound of the office door closing, its quiet click echoing through the gym. In a surge of panic Nellie whirled toward the sound, her heart thudding, but it was only a closed door, no sign of any danger, whoever had closed it gone now. Gone gone gone.
“Get a grip,” she hissed under her breath. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”
A shudder heaved through her, and another. Breaking into a run, she bolted for the locker room door.
Eight
SLOWLY NELLIE FILED with the other cadets into the Advanced chapel, a high-ceilinged chamber flickering with candlelight and thick with the scent of incense. The only room in the Advanced complex that had been painted anything but off-white, the walls were a deep twilight blue arcing toward a ceiling studded with stars and centered by the Red Planet and the Twin Moons. Lulunar, thought Nellie, staring at the moons. The month when those who truly love each other are reunited. Not in this life perhaps, but if the Goddess shows favor, there’s the afterlife—
A slight frown creased her forehead and she glanced upward a second time. Why was she thinking about the Twin Moons again? The thought of them kept showing up in her mind like a door that wouldn’t stay closed. And with it came such a deep wave of sadness that she wanted to crumple to the floor and never get up. What was wrong with her?
Slipping into a pew beside Phillip, Nellie knelt on the prayer bench and laid her forehead against the pew in front of her. Sweet Goddess Ivana, she prayed silently. Mother of us all, Mother who precedes all mothers, Mother who rules the stars, hear my prayer, this plea from one of your devoted soldiers of light—
A tear slid down her cheek and she brushed at it impatiently. This simply could not go on. It was shameful. Advanced cadets did not cry. Sniveling was for Black Core initiates, still missing their mothers. It was for civilians. But bewilderingly, no matter how often she’d told herself this during the past few days, the tears continued to roll down her cheeks. She would be sitting in a class or the cafeteria, her throat and eyes would begin to smart and then there they would be, taking over her face again. At first she hadn’t even been sure what they were. She’d cried before certainly, when wounded severely in the maze or a weapons demonstration, but never like this — weakly, insipidly, a few meaningless tears appearing out of nowhere and dripping down her face. More than once she’d mumbled a quick excuse in the halls and taken off so other cadets wouldn’t have to look away, embarrassed. In class she’d had to come up with ways to dry and compose her face without anyone noticing.
Here in the dimly lit chapel, her forehead pressed against the next pew, she could let the tears flow unnoticed. Aching with bewilderment, Nellie enclosed herself within the shadowy fall of her hair and sobbed quietly. What in the Goddess’s name was wrong with her? Nothing in her life had changed — she was still one of Advanced’s best cadets, acing her classes and racking up successful maze runs. And yet she was swamped with the constant feeling that something was missing, as if an invisible hole had been torn open in the air. As if she’d lost part of herself, like a hand.
The body is shit, she reminded herself half-heartedly. Full of crap and piss and screaming disappointment, like Col. Jolsen said.
Sudden confusion hit Nellie and she scowled. What was she thinking? The colonel wouldn’t have said that — instructors never used foul language. She must be making it up, but the memory of his voice was so clear. She could even feel his breath on her face as he spoke.
Time for another visit to the Mind Cleanser, Nellie told herself grimly. Straightening, she saw that the service had not yet begun, the room still softened by the whispered voices of praying cadets. With a sigh, she slipped out of the pew and approached one of the many small alcoves that dotted the chapel walls. Here she knelt again and pressed her lips to the feet of a small statue of the Goddess that stood, hands and eyes raised toward the star-studded heavens and the souls of Her dead sons. We’ll all be joined together in the afterlife, Nellie thought dully, brushing a fresh rush of tears from her face. It doesn’t matter if we’re separated now, I’ll see Lierin again someday and she’s happier now—
Nellie’s head jerked upright. Lierin? she thought, her heart thundering. Who is Lierin? Slit-eyed, she stared at the upraised face of the blue-robed Goddess above her. Had Ivana somehow sent the unfamiliar name into her mind? But why? In all her life Nellie had never heard of a person called Lierin. And yet she seemed almost to remember someone — a girl with long black hair, laughing as she crammed oolaga candy into her mouth ...
In Nellie’s mind a filing cabinet numbered MK5DZ surfaced and began to open, drawer by drawer. Waves of panic flooded her and she launched herself at the image, trying to slam the drawers closed. Cadets were forbidden to open their filing cabinets unless given the correct access code by a superior. Punishment was severe, at least several sessions with the Black Box. Certainly Nellie had never ever considered opening a filing cabinet on her own — never — but today, no matter how she rammed and shoved, MK5DZ’s drawers wouldn’t quite close. Then, as she stared in deepening horror, the tip of a folder emerged from the top drawer. Frantically she squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t going to look, she wasn’t going to, but a word on the folder’s label fairly threw itself at her eyes. LIERIN.
Nellie’s heart went off like a grenade. Here it was again, that name, and now she could clearly see a girl with long dark hair, dressed in a black bodysuit. She was a cadet, an Advanced cadet. Thoughts racing, Nellie stared at the girl’s laughing face. She didn’t look dangerous. Why had it been considered necessary to file her memories of this girl?
Well, whoever she was, Lierin had to be real if she’d been placed in a filing cabinet. A giant shudder of relief coursed through Nellie. She wasn’t crazy; these tears had a reason. Gently, with the softest of awe, she traced her fingertips over the bare feet of the statue before her. Whatever this new knowledge indicated, it had come to her here, at the fe
et of the Goddess. This meant the Goddess had permitted it. It had Her blessing, perhaps She’d even intended it. Why, it was even possible the Goddess had reached deep into Nellie’s mind and opened cabinet MK5DZ Herself.
At the front of the chapel, a priestess in an emerald green robe began the Prayer of the First Star at Dusk. Wiping a few last tears from her eyes, Nellie once again kissed the Goddess’s tiny feet and returned to her place beside Phillip.
THIS TIME THE shorn-headed girl and the green-eyed boy were standing in what looked to be a farmyard. Overhead Nellie could see the Twin Moons, each halfway through its cycle and casting a deep pearl light onto the landscape. A longing crept up her throat as she stared at the scene in her dream, imagining the texture of the cool outdoor air, layered with the dense scent of earth and growing things. Close to the shorn-headed girl, she could see a cat on a night prowl that had stopped to stretch. In her mind Nellie reached out and stroked it gently, each hair on the cat’s back defined and electric under her touch.
With a yowl, the cat leapt backward. Immediately the shorn-headed girl turned toward it, her eyes slitted, a scowl crossing her face. Behind her the boy said something, his voice an indecipherable murmur. Ignoring him, the shorn-headed girl fixed her gaze on the place the animal had been standing when Nellie touched it, even though the cat was now slinking under a nearby hedge. Suddenly Nellie felt a tingle pass through her brain and realized that the shorn-headed girl was somehow using her brief connection with the cat to reach directly into her thoughts. Instinctively she pulled back, tightening her mind against invasion, and the dream began to fade. With a moan, she sent her mind back toward the farmyard and immediately felt the shorn-headed girl pressing against her thoughts — not violently but insistently, demanding entry.
A ripple passed through the air behind the girl, and Nellie heard a vivid humming sound. Then, out of nowhere, a second shorn-headed girl appeared, the exact double of the first, except that she was wearing a baggy, slightly torn, gold-brocaded dress. Neither the first shorn-headed girl nor the boy displayed the least surprise at her sudden appearance. Indeed, the first girl seemed instantaneously to sense her double’s presence behind her. Withdrawing from Nellie’s mind, she turned toward her look-alike. Immediately the two began to argue, mirror images of one another as their eyes slitted and their shoulders hunched like cats. Behind them the boy stood patiently, waiting out their heated discussion. He seemed to be used to this kind of thing.
As she watched the girls argue, Nellie became aware of a throbbing sensation, a thick dull pulling that seemed to be focused on the front of her brain. Scanning the farmyard in her dream, she could see no cause for it. The two girls continued to argue, the boy to wait them out, and the cat to crouch, spitting, under the hedge. Abruptly the second shorn-headed girl, the one who’d stepped out of thin air, turned toward Nellie’s watching eyes. For a moment Nellie had the sense the girl was looking directly at her, no, beyond her, at something she herself was unable to see.
The second girl turned to the first, saying something Nellie couldn’t quite catch. Then she grabbed the hand of both the first girl and the boy. There was another vivid humming sound — a noise that didn’t come so much from the girl’s throat as from her very molecules. Again the air rippled, and then the three children disappeared.
With a cry, Nellie opened her eyes and found herself looking directly into Dr. Westcott’s face. In the dim hall light coming from the bedroom doorway, Nellie and the psychiatrist stared at each other without speaking, and then she became aware of a weight sitting on her forehead. The dull throbbing that permeated her brain was coming directly from it. Quickly she reached for the object but the psychiatrist was quicker, and it vanished into his pocket.
“What are you doing in my room?” Nellie whispered, panic fluttering in her throat.
“There, there,” Westcott said gently, sitting on the edge of her bed and patting her shoulder. “You were crying out in your dreams and your dorm mother was worried, so they called me in to check on you. That’s all.”
Duikstra called Westcott into the dorm? All the way from his house in the middle of the night because a girl was moaning in her sleep? Nellie opened her mouth to protest, but the psychiatrist cut her off smoothly.
“Nellie, I know you’re feeling upset,” he murmured, “but I want you to reach deep into your mind and find filing cabinet number MK79. Can you do that for me?”
Instinctively Nellie braced herself, but in spite of her resistance a cabinet numbered MK79 appeared in her mind.
“Open drawer three, folder seven,” Westcott said casually, as if she was sitting in the Relaxer and this was just the end of another session, something to keep his paycheck coming in. At his command the third drawer slid open and she saw a row of folders, stuffed with information. Memories. Things that had happened to her that she wasn’t allowed to know. Her life.
“No,” whimpered Nellie. She tried to sit up, but Westcott pushed her gently back down. When she tried again, his grip tightened on her arms. Fear surged through her. Baring her teeth, she began jackknifing her body.
“Tana!” snapped the psychiatrist. Immediately Tana’s dark outline appeared behind him and a small capsule was shoved under Nellie’s nose. A brief hiss sounded as the capsule was broken in two. Gasping, Nellie tried to jerk back as the sleeper gas seeped into her nostrils, but darkness engulfed her. She gave a quiet sigh and sagged motionless onto her bed.
FEET STRAPPED INTO place on the Round and Round firing-range disk, Nellie stood, pulse gun raised, firing at targets as they appeared before her. Of the many different practice ranges in the Advanced Program, this was her favorite — a rotating disk with four firing positions that stood at the center of a large circular range. After their feet were harnessed into position, shooters were given one complete cycle to adjust to the disk’s rotation before the targets began to appear. Dividers had been set up between the shooters as well as the various targets to prevent the shooters from catching a glimpse of what was coming next. And the targets changed constantly. Nellie couldn’t remember facing the same one twice in a practice session. It really kept her on her toes. Throw in sound effects, virtual-reality glasses, and the odd sudden increase or decrease in the disk’s spin rate, and she could count on getting a pretty good rush from the experience.
But today, with thoughts of Lierin floating through her head, it was hard to concentrate. Plus, she felt tired, achy all over, and her shooting arm was difficult to hold in firing position. This was weird, because she couldn’t think of any reason for her fatigue. Yesterday’s gymnastics had been the usual workout, and the cadets had spent the evening watching a double bill of horror flicks in the Common Room. The assignment Col. Jolsen had given them was to keep track of the way each character was knocked off. Nellie had sacked out at the back of the room with a boy named Wenn and things had gotten hot and heavy, but some part of her had continued watching the screen. When the colonel had asked the group to tally the various deaths at the end of the second movie, she could list all but one and it, being a dog, hardly rated.
The disk’s spin rate was set on slow, and for the past few minutes she’d been facing a series of night scenes — a street fight, an underground tomb and the deck of a ship in a storm. As she gunned down pirates, vampires and small-time crooks, her virtual-reality glasses sent stars, comets and asteroids whirling across her vision, reminders that this activity was service to the Goddess and dedicated to an elite holy purpose. Whatever appeared opposite, Nellie took it all on for Ivana, and somewhere a computer kept track of her holographic kill rate — the number she took down and the number she left standing. While the disk rotated, the scenes before her gradually brightened so that she was eventually facing daylit targets — people in shopping malls and schools, or getting on and off buses. Still, comets and stars whirled before her eyes, reminding her of the Goddess’s approval. Sometimes a figure whipped out a gun and fired back, sometimes not, it didn’t really matter — her score depe
nded on taking down every standing target.
As the scenes grew brighter, the disk’s spin rate increased. Usually this happened so imperceptibly that the shooters adjusted automatically, but whoever was at the controls this morning seemed to be making a game of it, causing small jerks so the shooters had to fight to stay on their feet. Bastard, Nellie thought bitterly, leveling a group of old ladies playing cards at a seniors’ center. This was sure to affect today’s score, and every score counted toward the end-of-the-month tally and overall standings. Not that it mattered. She was always in the top five, but she liked to keep ahead of Tana, and there was the threat of pejoratives or a session with the Black Box if a cadet slipped much in the standings.
Pulse gun level, she took out a row of kids climbing off a bus. Two years back, when she’d first entered Advanced, this kind of thing had bothered her, but she’d gotten used to it. The kids were, after all, only holographs, and the point of the exercise wasn’t the context of the image, it was simply to take down whatever was moving. Sure, the holographs splashed realistic blood when you hit the jugular, but that was for the shooter’s morale, and the rush was split-second at best; sometimes the disk spun so quickly, Nellie couldn’t be sure she’d hit anything at all.
With a jerk, the disk spun her away from the school bus and past another divider. Frowning, Nellie scanned the scene before her. Beyond the stars crowding her vision, she could see a wall with a door in it and a floor of bare planking, but no holograph or target. What was going on? Then, as the disk brought her directly opposite the door, it burst open and a small boy stumbled out. Three or four years old, he wobbled on his feet, arms spread to get his balance. When he saw Nellie, his eyes widened and he began to scream, “Mommy, Mommy!”
Nellie froze. This was different from the usual holograph. Sure, the targets often looked directly at the shooter, but you knew they were computer-generated — the faces frequently shared similar features and their expressions were overdone to the point of being cartoonish. It was all a game, really, just a way to rack up points, but this — the kid was too 3-D, his face still chubby with baby fat. In fact he looked so real, Nellie felt as if she could step off the disk and touch him, pick him up in her arms. Had there been some mistake? Was it possible a human child had accidentally found his way onto the range?