Aeon Nine

by Aeon Authors

  The bathroom door exploded in just as she put the pill in her mouth. The next second her head was crushed against the tiles and something in her face snapped. She felt the officer’s blunt, bitter tasting fingers probing her mouth as she passed out.

  She woke up in Broward Special Corrections’ hospital wing, and has been in one part of the compound or another since. I was born seven months later, in the prison Nursery.

  I was placed in the same home as my brother and sister—though they were moved out within a year of my birth. I stayed until I was eleven, then I was sent to a military boarding school because I had become a disciplinary problem. The state paid my scholarship to the private school, with the understanding that I would enter government service as soon as I was eligible. That was pretty much what happened.

  I really don’t regret it.

  Frawley has just set her purse on a table in the foyer when I turn the corner. She looks at me for a split second, then snatches the purse up again and dives out the door. We burst out of the building’s lobby, she several yards ahead of me. She is wearing black tights and running shoes—her off duty clothes, I gather—and is opening up the distance between us rapidly. I have to make a split-second decision: do I continue to chase her, or do I draw my weapon now, while I am still close enough to steady myself for a shot?

  Had I known I was going to arrest her today, I would have brought backup. I draw my weapon and pound to a stop in front of a parked car. She opens the distance even further while I get my sights steady. I hold my breath, using the car’s roof as a rest, and squeeze off three shots.

  The last one drops her. I’m completely winded by the time I am standing over her.

  She is shot through the backside and lower stomach. Blood is everywhere, and she is vomiting weakly. A woman is screaming as I go through Frawley’s purse—sure enough, the pills are there. Two packets of them, in fact.

  The ambulance arrives after the local police, but before my colleagues: if they are going to save the fetus, they will have to get Frawley’s body to the operating room very quickly.

  Far from being over, this incident is just starting for me. I will be held over the next two shifts writing reports, having the pills tested by the lab, being counseled by the service psychiatrist, and making my obligatory appearance before a grand jury.

  At least I will get the next five working days off.

  “I heard you got one,” my mother says before she’s even seated at the wooden table. “You must be proud.”

  I realize that it is going to be as difficult a visit as the last one. I did only what was necessary. I don’t relish the grislier aspects of my job, as do some of my colleagues—I prefer to avoid conflict, where possible. I decide the best tack to take with my mother is silence, at least until I can puzzle out her mood.

  “I heard she bled to death right there on the street.”

  Where, suddenly, is all this antipathy coming from? Who knows how these rumors get started? The paramedic said Frawley died almost immediately—from shock.

  “Are you embarrassed?” she asks. “That would be something, at least.”

  I see that this line of questioning is not going to wither away in silence.

  “I’d rather not talk about my work.”

  “Not to me, at least,” she answers. “So, what would you like to talk about, son?”

  That word again. Inexplicably, I feel my eyes prickle.

  “How come you’re not smoking?” I ask. My voice sounds perfectly level.

  “I’m back on the production line again,” she says, laughing. “You know, I was beginning to think you’d actually thrown your weight around a little to keep me off the breeding line.”

  “I can’t do…”

  “No, no. Don’t apologize,” she cuts me off. “I’m not blaming you. It was a crazy notion to begin with.” There really is no rancor in her voice.

  For the first time ever, I am uncomfortable that the cameras are recording all this. I cast around for a safe topic, then something occurs to me.

  “I noticed that you had a facial tic, last—no—the time before last. Is it some kind of medical condition?”

  “Your concern is a bit belated, I think. But no, you know it wasn’t a medical condition, I think.”

  “Then what?”

  “I was doing it on purpose…”

  “Nobody can control their muscles like that.”

  “You can, if you practice. I have nothing to do here but practice. Did you know Indian holy men could stop their heartbeats?”

  I look at her blankly.

  “No, I don’t imagine that’s the kind of thing you know much about. Well, it’s true. If you practice enough, you can control all the muscles in your body.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can control my body.”

  We have, it seems, skated back onto thin ice again. The radical feminists have always referred to women’s reproductive offenses as taking control of their bodies.

  “It’s all right,” she says, “you don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to be here.”

  “You know I come whenever…”

  “No, I mean for this.”

  “For what?”

  She smiles at me, then she closes her eyes. When she opens them again, they are unfocussed and her face assumes an expression of unconscious concentration, if there is such a thing.

  I see, suddenly, that the muscles of her abdomen are tensing mightily under her prison smock. It takes another few seconds for me to realize what she’s doing.

  I knock the table over trying to get around it, but it is already too late; blood gushes from underneath the smock, making a crimson blotch from waist to hemline.

  Guards rush into the room, and less than a minute later, the medical team.

  “Christ, she’s bleeding out,” the doctor in charge says.

  “What’s going on?” the guard supervisor, a man, wants to know.

  “She’s got a massive hemorrhage—looks like a bad miscarriage.”

  My mother’s eyes focus again, and she looks into mine. I am unable to look back without flinching.

  She coughs, spraying flecks of blood across my face.

  “Oh, man,” the doctor groans, “She’s bleeding from everywhere.” He’s young, and sounds afraid.

  She is loaded onto an aluminum stretcher. I think about taking her hand, but the moment passes in a blur, and she is being bustled out the steel door, presumably to the prison hospital.

  There are, I notice, bloody footprints left everywhere by the medical team and the guards. I right the visitor’s table before I leave.

  According to the trial transcript, the triage nurse at the National Health branch—a fifty-year-old widow with the improbable name of Meredith Sanction—called NRA to report a possible reproduction violation. NRA, of course, already had a folder on my mother. Since they could not get an agent there in time, however, they authorized the state police to make the arrest.

  Meredith Sanction testified that my mother’s call fit the classic self-abortion pattern. Meredith Sanction’s own marriage had been barren. It is on the record that the magistrate admonished the defense lawyer for pursuing irrelevant testimony during Mrs. Sanction’s cross examination.

  The magistrate took less than fifteen minutes to reach his decision. Sentencing was delayed until my birth—presumably so that my mother would not self-abort in the face of a life sentence.

  The minister concludes his ceremony over my mother’s grave, then hurries in out of the rain. My brother and sister stand as close to the grave as they can without having to look at me. My brother cries openly, and my sister stares, dry-eyed, at the brown rectangle in the turf. Only I can see the casket.

  I still have two days off before I go back to work.

  The Girl Who Left

  Terry Hayman

  “I was worrying about how space stations might service the travelers of the future. We’ve already got child trafficking and sex tourism flowing thro
ugh our port cities. What happens when the ports are self-contained little worlds a kid can’t run away from? What would it take—what kind of soul, mind, choices—to get free?”

  IN THE PITCH BLACK, the metal grate under Eduardo’s feet shuddered. Eduardo backed against the tube wall and heard the other kids do the same, their suits’ I.D. lights a ring of dancing fireflies.

  The mucky platform shuddered a second time and the blades below it whirred to life.

  “Oh, madre,” Eduardo choked, reaching blindly back for a handhold. How could he have trusted the story of the chica que partío, the girl who left? Trusted and risked all their lives.

  With a thump, the grate began sliding back under his feet and a howling suction dragged him to his knees. The children near him screamed.

  Then he was suddenly jerked back against the wall, stuck like a bulkhead magnet. A cascade of thuds told him the others were too. The vacuum whooshed garbage past them, fecal matter, metal discards, plastics. Then the only sounds were the suit-to-suit coms of frightened breathing, but you could still feel the blades whirring below them, humming through the walls.

  Eduardo was about to speak, reassure his team, when a new voice sounded in his helmet.

  “You hear this and you’re probably doomed, slagger. Bout to get chopped and popped, or diced and iced, as we used to say on 13. The other hand, you followed my directions and made it this far. You’re three-quarters down Station’s shitter in an EVA suit and it’s gripping the wall for you, right? That’s the only way you’d be hearing this little crawler I sent down to wait for you…hopefully for a group of you. So listen up, crusties, cause things get real interesting in a few minutes. Better prep your brain pans to take in how I made it out, you want to make it too.

  “Ready?”

  But Eduardo could only half listen to the directions which followed because her voice, the chica que partío’s voice, was so much a part of him. It had been so from the time he had stumbled back to his sleeper six days ago and triggered the crawler she’d left for him there.

  Madre. Her impossible story. As he began groping along the wall to locate the chopper shut-off, the story rushed through him again.

  Hey, Eduardo. My name’s Maggie. I’m from level 13 like your kid brother, and I’m thirteen years old. (Well, yuh-uh.) I’m a cleaner, not a sexkid, because I howled and scratched too much when they first brought me in. Lucked out that a Station cleaner had just turned sixteen and been moved out that week.

  That’s background, okay? What I really want to tell you is what happened to your brother and why. What I know of it. My story and his… Well, you’ll see.

  Station time 0235, a Saturday, all lights dim. I was creeping the side corridors of our level, looking for your brother, my lover—Squirrel.

  The steam ropes stank, the blower. Air was thick. And I was so freaked I could hardly breathe.

  Why? Cause the last three days of my gathered downtime I’d been on a secret mission through the downdecks. Damaged, right? But this uppie who called himself “Spartacus” had kind of saved me, then suckered me into it. Gave me stolen codes to access all the other downdecks. Even yours. Just to recon.

  Freakin.

  So my last trip was the 5-6 level. And like all the rest the kids came out and just stared at me when I showed, assuming I was just another lying perv, right? Down for private selection. But then one of the little girls walked right up to me and tugged on my pants and looked up at me with these big blue eyes. Five years old? I knelt down, tied back her hair, wiped her nose, and asked her name. Baby Anne. And suddenly she’s saying, “Are you my mommy? Please be my mommy?”

  Then every—kid—there was on me, wailing. Grabbing me. Choking me. I got free and ran.

  Now, back on 13, I was looking for Squirrel because I didn’t know if I could put on the face I had to for my job, to go meet Spartacus. I was raw.

  The blower coughed and I jumped, throwing myself back against the passage wall, barely breathing.

  Shit.

  Breathe.

  I almost started to cry, which shows you how freaked I was. I should have found Squirrel by now. Nervy and Blow, his usual male hangs, didn’t know where he was. He hadn’t been called updeck. Just…vanished. Sent to damaged?

  I pushed off the wall and jogged faster, turned into the tailpipe where they used to keep overflow sexkids on our level. The ones they’d sell off at bargain rates. It was my last 13 hidey to check. If he wasn’t there…well, I’d just puke.

  Then, shit and uni-praise, I found him.

  He was nestled inside a chest-high cargo box that “went missing” last month. It was full of some foam and stuff that Squirrel and other kids of 13 had thrown in to make an uber-hidey-hole for the needy.

  But Squirrel?

  He lifted his bleached blond head and looked up at me. His beautiful dark eyes had gone all glassy, the pupils dilated. He stank of rancid-sweet smoke. On cue, he lifted his pipe up from his side and took a long drag. Coughed.

  I almost barfed on him I was so furious. It was Squirrel who’d nursed me back to health after the beaters finally made me a cleaner and let me go. Squirrel who taught me to never ever let them get to me or I’d end up in damaged. And when I turned eleven, he showed me how to forget my past completely and have sex for fun. Quietly. So no one else knew, on 11 or anywhere, as we moved up the levels together.

  How could he do this to himself? To me?

  I hoisted myself over the edge to drop into the box with him. Two little bags of bones in there. We probably weighed less than forty kilos together.

  I slapped his face. “Sup?” I demanded.

  He blinked. “Hunh?”

  “Why you popping?”

  His head wobbled a bit. “Miles, Pax, and Trauma. They threw Paula down the shitter.”

  “No.”

  “Said she stole something from the uppies. They sent it out with her.”

  “Oh no no no,” I moaned because I knew it was true. They’d really done it. Popped her down the Station waste disposal with the food, garbage, everything. You picture that? Someone you know getting sucked into that big central tube? Stopped at damaged level, of course, so the good stuff can get scavenged. But live shit like Paula won’t get scavenged, will it. No, because even the damaged know it’s toxic. Which means she gets finally flushed into the chopper for a second extraction of water and reusables, her remains powderized and blown spaceward each time we spin through the winds.

  Bye, bye, girlfiend.

  I tried to get Squirrel to hold me, but he just fumbled a dark hand up my shirt to rub my nips with his thumb and pinky. Made me want to cry. I think I did. I think I burbled about Spartacus too. But then, despite the hour and me being furious and scared and weird, slag me if it didn’t start getting me hot. Squirrel had this way. His long, gentle fingers massaged my heart as much as my skin.

  “You want to?” he mumbled.

  “Not with you popped.”

  But then I pressed up against him and slipped him my tongue. Your brother, despite his shortcomings and the fuzz on his upper lip, was a high grade addiction.

  Only he couldn’t be. Not tonight.

  I yanked myself back and scrambled out of the box. They sniff and analyze anyone going updeck, right? If I joined with Squirrel now, they’d know. Spartacus might find out.

  Which meant…?

  Slag me. My bony little knees felt like pudding and I grabbed both hands onto the edge of Squirrel’s box. I realized I was covered in sweat. The fear hadn’t gone away once I’d found Squirrel; it had just changed to a sick lump in my stomach. Nothing resolved.

  Squirrel looked up stupidly from inside his box. “Maggie?”

  I shook my head and took a deep breath. “Squirrel…if I vanished, would you miss me?”

  His glassy eyes blinked at me. For just a second, he seemed to actually process what I was saying enough to focus. “Whassa matter?”

  “Nothing. I just want you to know…” But his eyes were drifting agai
n. His head rolled down to his popper pipe. Sucking and making it pop.

  I shut my mouth. What in the name of the unified holies had I been about to do? I mean, slag me. Right before work? Right before meeting a guy who could have me killed?

  “S’okay,” Squirrel said and passed out.

  “No it’s not,” I said and hurried away.

  Fifteen minutes later I was full-suited and at the 13 Updeck access.

  “That a new suit, Margaret 1315?” said the access guard. “Nice shape.”

  Har-har. You know the suits? Ones that look like giant orange baggies. Bout all most of you know about cleaners, right? Joke on 13 was you could get two skinny kids humping inside a cleaner suit and from the outside they’d look like a single with spin sickness. Everyone thinks we’ve got it easy.

  Like this…

  “Go. No. Stop.”

  The level locks stayed shut before me.

  “1315, strip down.”

  I looked at the guard. He was looking stupidly at the monitors to his right. Like there was really something there.

  “Why?” I said.

  His head jerked up, eyes mean. “You say something, slag?”

  My whole body was hot. Too nervous. Too much. I forced some of it out through my pores, made myself shake my head, and stripped down to my singlet. The guard waited. I took the singlet off too. When I was naked, the guard pulled on his poly gloves and said, “Stay still.”

  Two minutes later, he grunted, “Filthy. But nothing new.” He stuck his hands in the cleaners to burn off the gloves, then gave my ass a slap and told me to get dressed.

  I hid my face as I did so he wouldn’t see the flush and misinterpret it. It wasn’t because of him or what he’d just done. It was because I was suddenly sure I wasn’t coming back. And I hadn’t told Squirrel I loved him.