To the Stars

by Nathan Dodge

  The opportunity appeared more quickly than I could have hoped for. I learned that there were, unofficially, two parties in the camp: those in favor of Yuri (a vanishingly small minority), and those against. The latter’s thoughts were voiced most vociferously by Ekaterina, a tough, well-scarred and heavily muscled woman, some two decades older and inches shorter than me. She was the sister of the woman who had died, Anfisa.

  As I was ladling out meals one lunch four days in, I observed an interesting exchange. The day’s meal was a luxurious turn on Khartcho stew, laden with fresh rabbit instead of beef. Even here, only servers were permitted to touch and serve the food—I had never been entirely sure if this was a Japanese holdover, or to prevent food theft and subsequent riots—and I apportioned the generous serving of rice we were permitted and then poured the two ladles of stew over it, passing it over with the tiny little head-bow that I had adopted since my arrival at this planet. The woman in front of me snorted, looking at the portion, and my stomach tightened. A double portion in my old camp was punished with lashings, but I could hardly afford to offend anyone here as new as I was. I opened my mouth to apologize, but never had the chance.

  “Yuri thinks we should reduce rations. She thinks we are overfed. She thinks many thinks,” Ekaterina said, her broad shoulders and slight potbelly mocking her own words. The obvious disdain made the words even harsher than they already were.

  I was shocked into silence. I could have been exiled in my former camp for voicing something not much worse than that. It would have been considered extreme, of course—and yet, not entirely unheard of. One did not criticize the administrators. The women before and after her paused in line. I thought to chasten her.

  “Yuri thinks she’s a god,” said the left one, one of the few whose accent was as plainly North American as I’d heard, her words thin and pale in comparison. “I heard she actually wanted to work on the yūrei moss. Bringing that poison in, when we’re safe here!” She snorted loudly.

  “When you see a lion, you run from it. You don’t go up inspecting its teeth until it does something,” the Russian grumbled. The others nodded at her, and another slapped her on the back, laughing. They all turned to walk away, trays in hand, and as they went, almost out of hearing, I heard the American one say, “When’s your date?” and the heavyset Russian responded, “Tomorrow.”

  My hands froze up on the ladle and I stood there, heart pounding. The date was almost certainly referencing time with Kel. Already, there was a bit of a black market for trading upcoming shifts with Kel for favors by the minority who had no interest in Kel. I had studiously redirected all inquiries to the woman Hana, who seemed to be handling the scheduling. It was an opportunity for power, but one I had been hesitant to utilize—I didn’t want my efforts to be too visible. So far, the woman had permitted the date trades. It seemed silly to deny one woman, who dearly wanted the time with Kel, to give it to one who saw it as just another chore, after all.

  I planted the first seeds before I had even left the lunch bar. I was assisting in storing the leftovers and scouring the dirty receptacles when the woman next to me inquired how I had become a widow.

  “Polera cough,” I lied without hesitation. Really, it was only a half-lie: Kelly had been infected with the gray plague, and, knowing his death was coming, had volunteered to handle the most dangerous scout work for the few days before his body began to crumble, in order to build our financial reserve. In that weakened state, he had picked up numerous infections. The last time we spoke had been on opposite sides of a full-strength hygiene shield, and his breathing had been labored, his face bearing the hallmark rosy-cheeked flush of the polera cough.

  I liked to think he was kind to himself at the end. That he ate, perhaps, one of the gentler poisonous peri-fungi that would gray his mind and numb his pain. I had passed him through the shield a copy of the same picture I showed Kel now daily. Perhaps he sat near the great, kilometer-wide Golden River as he said goodbye to us, studying our family picture and eating his poison. That’s what I’d have done. As far as deaths go here, it would have been a good one.

  “I am sorry,” the woman said, and I shook my head free of the memories, wiping the nascent tears from my eyes. I quietly blessed the unintended emotion.

  “It is nothing a thousand other women have not experienced,” I said, my voice thick. “A quarter of my camp died from the gray plague the winter before we arrived, and the polera cough has picked off the remaining weak ones. Fifteen people alone in my small camp.”

  “Yuri-sensei does not yet have enough vaccine to share it with all the camps,” the woman said softly.

  I nodded. I knew the realities out there as none of these women did. “She is wise to withhold it until she has enough,” I said. “I’ve seen people kill for much less.”

  No one asked after my husband after that, though it was clear the word had been spread from the sympathetic looks I saw. That night, I took my second step to shore up Yuri’s support base as I readied Kel for bed, his social coordinator at hand. I had learned, by this point, that Hana’s English comprehension was as good as mine, though she didn’t speak it. I had heard other women carry on whole conversations with her, one in English or Russian and once even a little French, while she responded in Japanese. I spoke, therefore, with the certainty she would understand.

  “Who is helping with Kel tomorrow?” I asked lightly, almost absently. She did not respond initially, but I didn’t repeat myself. As I changed Kel’s diaper, I glanced over and saw the woman had pulled out a tiny reader, and was scrolling through the day. It was a little terrifying and reassuring both to realize Kel merited such status: a social coordinator, with her own personal reader. The medic, sure; medics always had one. But Kel? I was glad I hadn’t seen it before. I was nervous enough already.

  “Laura. Katia. Ekaterina,” she finished.

  “Ekaterina. She lost her sister recently, yes? So sad. What does she do?”

  The woman opened her mouth, then paused, returning to her reader, tapping furiously. She handed it to me—I wondered, again, at being permitted to touch it; didn’t they have any rules here at all?—and looked down. There were the three contract profiles on each of the women, and I glanced, briefly, at all three. My heart leapt when I saw Ekaterina’s profile. It was almost too easy.

  “Expanding the gardens?” I shrieked, allowing myself a little volume. The woman jumped as well. I snatched Kel to me in what was only half an act. “She is breaking new ground! There are spores in that ground, and he doesn’t have his immunizations yet! What if there is yūrei moss? What if she brings in the plague? We cannot expose Kel. She cannot touch him. She cannot see him!”

  My objections weren’t the most solid. Everyone knew the mountains were healthier. They would sterilize the ground almost as soon as it was tilled before inserting our own supportive bacteria. Still, I suspected others would see some validity to my objections. I permitted myself a few further screeching’s, albeit of lesser volume. Open anger wasn’t typically appreciated even by the second-generation Japanese. Hana’s eyes widened through all of this, rapid blinking following. She nodded, finally, then rapidly, and patted my back furiously until I left off, Kel now mewling and searching at my breast.

  “Thank goodness for Yuri-sensei and her vaccines,” I said softly, once Kel had returned to nursing happily. “She’s a miracle.” I did not check to see if Hana took notice of that, but so far she hadn’t proved stupid. I would assume the best.

  The next day went well, and I almost felt guilty hearing Ekaterina’s anguished cries that evening outside my room before dinner as Hana quietly explained to her that she would not be seeing Kel. But I had to protect us somehow, some way, and Yuri was an important pathway there. I had concerns about what would happen after his immunizations were complete, but I had some ideas on how to block her, there, too—though I also suspected Hana had already noted my power play and would support it. Her wife had died from the polera cough, too, I’d learned.
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  It became increasingly clear over the next few days that I had a powerful bargaining chip on my side with Kel, perhaps the most powerful one in camp, and thereafter I was careful not to overplay it. I understood now why I had been given a key to my room. I began to lock it quietly at night, opening it early in the morning as soon as I had risen. I made no further hints as to the unsuitability’s of any person or even much objection to some of the stranger foods they fed him—although when it rained, I did reasonably forbid him from going outside for a full day, as the yūrei moss spored within some twenty hours of a fresh rainfall. The women found it a little amusing, overprotective, really, but they also did not protest.

  Oddly, this was the source of yet another comfort. The post-rain scouting for contaminants, even here, was undertaken by volunteers only. In my experience, this “volunteer” work was taken by the eldest, sickly, or otherwise most inconsequential members of the camp who lacked the leverage to escape it. This camp actually had several properly made protective suits for these expeditions, an unusually humane expenditure that must have cost Madame greatly, and further built my respect for her camp. Learning of the protective measures, I actually signed up—twice—for scouting, only to find my name somehow lost each time I came to report for duty. The caretaker gently assured me after the second time that they would let me know when my assistance was needed.

  Although the fuss over Kel by no means died down (an entire nursery was arranged and dedicated to him), I found myself increasingly under the attentions of the grandmothers. One cornered me, secretly, in the garden, just days after my arrival. She offered me fresh-pressed vegetable oil for my own use to moisturize my hair and hands and nursing-worn nipples. I accepted it with something akin to awe. Not a day later, I found a woman inviting me to a poetry reading.

  There was no question that they were currying favor with me in the hopes of time with Kel. But as the weeks went by and it became increasingly clear that I left the decision of assigning caretakers to his activities coordinator, who had so far proved scrupulously fair, the efforts didn’t disappear. They longed to hold Kel as much as they wanted to swap stories about teething, and rashes, and the best way to soothe night terrors. There was a whole world of information that they had put away and longed to take out and examine, stories of births and deaths and tender memories that had had no airings in many years.

  I became their recipient, at first in an effort to build alliances and safety, but soon in real earnest. I had lived in shame over his arrival for so long, almost entirely lacking in any familial support. Now, I was the happy confidante of an entire tribe.

  Through it all, Madame remained an object of curiosity for me. Though I heard everywhere of her directives, her preferences, even a bit of her tragic story (she had lost her husband and only child to one of the lesser plagues), nowhere did I actually see her that first week. I finally had the temerity to inquire, only to learn, to Yuri’s amusement, there was no secret at all.

  “She went six months ago to the western continent, exploring new sites,” she said, filing specimen samples while I followed her around the square, white box of a medroom, its walls lined by storage units. The day’s grandmother was almost literally at my elbow with every movement, but I tried to ignore her as much as I could in the small space. Yuri had permitted me to help her with filing the past two days, a small privilege I already clung to ferociously.

  “By herself?”

  “No, no. Took most of my assistants and two dozen contracts. That’s why I’m short-staffed. The past ten years, now that subsistence is covered, we’ve focused on bringing in more educated contracts, worked on the hybrids and such.”

  “When do you sell the polera vaccine?”

  “Soon. Very soon we’ll have enough.”

  “And Madame?”

  “She’s with a crew of three ships—though one of them barely merits the name; it’s an emergency pod we commandeered a bit back—trying to find a healthier location. She feels there wasn’t enough investigation before the colonies started. That’s where the specimens we’re filing are from,” she said, waving at the load of soft, grayish wax paper boxes by the door.

  “To check for the more dangerous spores?”

  “And also useful ones. The others come back now and again, but she has been crammed inside the Greenrun—that’s the name of the ship,” she explained, “—the whole time. But that does not bother her. Madame is tough.”

  Madame is tough was an accolade I became accustomed to hearing almost daily. For all that the mystery of her absence was solved, my curiosity about the woman herself was unsated, and I spent several evenings feeling out stories on her.

  It was less difficult than I had expected. A new audience to old stories was a good draw. Details poured down to me: her tragic losses, her rebuilding of the camp, the near-overthrow by her surviving brother, who had been killed by one of the men he had colluded with, and, ultimately, the expulsion of that entire group. There had still been a handful of men working in the camp even a decade ago, but since that rebellion nearly forty years ago, Madame had never willingly brought in anyone other than mature, usually bereft woman. She had no room for “ungrateful upstarts,” as one woman put it.

  Two weeks after our arrival, after Kel’s vaccines had been given after extraordinarily thorough vetting, I found my ploy had worked as desired—almost too well. The contingents had quickly revised in light of my preferences. The pro-Yuri group had grown strong, spearheaded, in a sense, by me, although more vocally by Hana. It was difficult for me to catch the particulars with my exceptionally poor Japanese, but I heard more than one conversation with women spluttering to agree with how Yuri-sensei had been too harshly judged. The sensei part amused me a little; half the time I’d been berated for using Japanese honorifics in English in my old camp, told they didn’t belong in English use, while the other half of the time my omission had, I had been explicitly informed, been evidence of my poor education. Here the attempts were so obviously awkward and sincere it was hard not to laugh.

  At any rate, Ekaterina’s followers had all but collapsed, in no small part because Ekaterina had ceased to speak on the subject. She seemed to have grown smaller, slumping sadly whenever I saw her. Inevitably, a slow wave of grandmothers would align themselves around me when she was near, cutting off my view of her as she disappeared behind a forest of gray uniforms.

  I was relieved Madame was gone. If she had seen my manipulations, she might have reconsidered her invitation to Kel and me. Instead, I found myself growing day by day a little calmer, a little less fearful. The key, the gifts, the ingratiation into my good graces all said my fellow contracts expected me to remain here. By the time Madame returned, my power base, if I played it right, might be such that even she would hesitate to offend me—though that did not protect me entirely from a quiet night killing. I was therefore determined that my next efforts would be of a friendlier nature.

  A full week passed with minimal work assignments, and I was beginning to be frustrated again when I found my opening. I had just finished the filings for Yuri when one of the grandmothers popped in, graying red hair piled up on her head like a dying fire.

  “Down-mountain tower’s fried. Mech always falls going up the ladder, so we need to send up Elsa,” the woman snapped, disappearing with hardly another word. Elsa? I thought I had begun to know most of the women, but her name was entirely unfamiliar. I turned to Yuri, who sighed and turned on the intercom. There were only two ports to it, here and in Madame’s chambers, so all announcements went through Yuri anymore.

  “Let me get it,” I said.

  “It’s outside,” Yuri said, raising an eyebrow; after all, that had been my objection to Ekaterina.

  “He’s had his vaccines now,” I said. “He is safe, yes? And I always do the decontamination rinse twice if I go outdoors.” It was true: even here I scrubbed myself down after rains, and Kel too, despite the effect on his delicate skin. Better dry skin than death, and besides, we h
ad the rubbing oil now. We were both much softer now, in more ways than one.

  “I suppose he is,” she said hesitantly. “But let them know you requested it.” I nodded. The request was clear: she didn’t want anyone thinking she was sending me to my death. I nodded and hurried to the exit nearest the tower. I was met with more than a few stares, though I explained quickly enough.

  “Look, I have to earn my keep somehow,” I said as I bundled up the heavy battery pack, nearly fifty pounds in weight. The overseer all but growled as she strapped me in. “And that’s not an easy walk up there. A younger person should be doing it.”

  “You’re sure you know how to install one of these things?” the overseer asked.

  “They made me do it when I was seven months pregnant, at night once,” I said, and everyone drew in their breaths in horror. I almost laughed. “Trust me, I’ve got this.” I flexed my arm at the crowd, and a couple of hoots followed. I grinned broadly and popped out the door through the hygiene shield and up the ladder.

  Like most camps, most of the outer walls were a miserable gray color, half-crumbling and ugly, an initial sludge wall from first landing. In other camps, it matched the interior wall. Here, it was almost purely camouflage, a remnant of a much earlier time in this camp’s history. Still, it housed the towers and their floodlights, battery-powered still; digging in the ground to lay power lines was avoided whenever possible due to the dangers of turning up some new, hideous peri-fungi. Solar power would have been a simple fix, of course, but who had the money to import the materials to build the arrays?

  So instead, we had batteries, weighty and cumbersome, but rechargeable with homegrown walking power back in the camp. Replacing them was one of the more dreaded camp tasks, but one I had always enjoyed. It was almost the only way to ever see out of the claustrophobic walls. Kelly and I had loved those assignments, watching the distant Golden River through the glittering gray-green jungle.