The Matriarch Manifesto

by Devin Hanson

  Leila wasn’t worthy of being a matriarch.

  The thought hung in her mind and she couldn’t shake it free. She wasn’t worthy to live forever. There was something rotten about her, something in the core of who she was that was filthy and beneath the purity of the matriarchs.

  Shame blossomed within her and grew to fill the emptiness. Everyone would know she was tainted. She remembered the looks on the faces of the other girls when her failure had been announced. They had been horrified to be standing next to someone who had been proven corrupt.

  Was this to be her life, then? Sixty years of worthless existence? Was she to lead a meaningless life without even the bare comfort of children? What mark could she leave on the world now? A hundred years from now, nobody would even remember her name.

  A sudden thought occurred to her. She could save up money and travel to Mars. The Helix Rebuild had been denied her, but the Womack Process would still work. Even the thought of that turned her stomach and she discarded it immediately. Better to die and be forgotten than to live on the stolen lives of other women.

  Death, then, was her only future.

  She would have died eventually, of course, but forty thousand years is more time than any human could fully comprehend. The whole of human history was only a fraction of that time. What wonder and glory of the human race had she been denied the knowledge of?

  What was the point of the empty struggle of life? Sixty years of daily, pointless toil, was all she had to look forward to, then eventually the final humiliation of a failing body, followed by ignominious death.

  She wished she was dead.

  The thought grew within her. Death would be a reprieve from a life devoid of worth. It would bring an end to the suffering before it had a chance to begin.

  Leila had never given much thought to the afterlife. Where religion had entered her thoughts at all, it was belief in the rebirth of the soul that had been the most appealing to her. If she died, would she be reborn? Would she have another chance to take the Challenge and perhaps this time succeed?

  As attractive as the thought was, she couldn’t convince herself to believe in it. No, all death would bring was an early end to the inevitable.

  If only she had been killed in whatever disaster had just happened. That would have been the easiest; a swift death that was out of her control. Her existence could have ended, and she could have moved on to whatever afterlife was her fate.

  Belatedly, she remembered her mother was on the habitat, along with most of her brothers. Were they safe? The shame returned, harder than before. It had taken her nearly half an hour of wallowing in self-pity before she even wondered if her family had survived. No wonder she wasn’t worthy to be a matriarch.

  How many people had died? Morbid curiosity pulled her up into a sitting position and she turned her tablet back on. The public security channel had all the information she wanted. A score of sectors across four levels had been marked as isolated. Red lines marked areas that had taken direct damage, with yellow outlines around rooms and hallways that had been exposed to atmosphere.

  She traced her finger across the map and zoomed in, searching with increasing anxiety. They had had an examination room reserved for after the Challenge. It was to be a dual appointment, with Derek scheduled to receive his yearly Helix treatment at the same time. Level two, room 16B.

  Her heart froze in her chest. 16B was squarely in the center of the damage. She was on her feet and halfway to the door before she remembered that she wasn’t allowed to leave her room. She couldn’t claim a family emergency, since her mother was no longer her family.

  It was too much. Leila sank down to her haunches and hugged her knees to her chest. Her eyes burned and the tears refused to come. Her tear ducts felt like someone was running a pipe cleaner through them. What could she do, anyway? If her mother had been punctual to her appointment, as she always was, then she was dead, or at the very best, locked on the wrong side of a bulkhead. There was nothing she could do to help, even if they would let her.

  She let gravity pull her backward to the ground and she stared up at the ceiling. The polymer floor was cold and hard against her shoulders but she didn’t have the energy to do anything about it.

  Time passed. She may have fallen asleep, or maybe the spinning thoughts in her mind sucked awareness of the outside world away. Was there a difference? Her tablet chimed, and her eyes opened. Someone was calling her.

  Leila closed her eyes again. Weariness pooled in her limbs. Her neck was stiff and painful but she didn’t care enough to move to a more comfortable position.

  Her tablet chimed again and she ignored it. There was nobody in the world that she had the faintest interest in talking to.

  It felt good, in a spiteful sort of way, to ignore the call. It was probably something important, but she derived a sour pleasure from ignoring the call. It wasn’t behavior worthy of a matriarch, but she had no illusions about that any more. She didn’t have to impress anyone with her manners or conscientiousness.

  She was fully awake now. The time she had spent on the floor had started an ache in her hips and shoulders, and now that she was paying attention to it, the aches seemed to grow worse. Still, she couldn’t summon the energy to sit up. What difference did it make?

  Someone rapped on the door and it slid open. A man wearing the proctor’s insignia on his shoulder stepped into the room. “Leila, are you…” He sighed as he saw her lying on the floor.

  Leila stared at the ceiling, refusing to meet his eyes. Ignoring the calls seemed petty now, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of admitting she had been wrong.

  “The dirigible returning to Nueva Angela is leaving ahead of schedule. With the damage to the habitat, all non-essential personnel are being evacuated.” Leila heard the scuff of the proctor’s shoes as he walked over and knelt down next to her. “Life may seem impossible to you right now,” he said gently, “but in a few weeks you’ll find new purpose.”

  The obvious counter was the percentage of failed Challenge contestants who committed suicide within twenty-four hours. Leila closed her eyes. She didn’t know if she had the courage to take her own life. She heard the rustle of the proctor’s clothes as he stood up again.

  “I don’t want to carry you,” he said matter-of-factly, “but if you do not stand on your own, I will.”

  The humiliation of being dragged off the habitat by the proctor was more than Leila was willing to experience, no matter how much she wanted to make life difficult for him. Stiffly, she rolled to her side and climbed to her feet. She hung her head, unwilling to look up at the proctor.

  “That’s better. Don’t forget your tablet.”

  Leila accepted the device and hugged it to her chest. It was the only thing she was allowed to keep of her old life. Tablets were universal: everyone had an identical tablet and the content on them was stored in the central cloud, but the scratches on the case and other small nicks and wear made it hers.

  “I’m to walk you to the dirigible,” the proctor said. “If you cooperate, I’ve no issue with letting you walk on your own. But if you try and make a run for it, I have the authorization to tase you and bring you aboard in handcuffs.”

  That made Leila look at him in disbelief. She had failed the Challenge, but she wasn’t a criminal.

  The proctor shrugged. “Things are tense right now. I have more important things to do than to chase you around the habitat. I have no desire to tase you, Leila, but given the situation, I won’t hesitate.”

  “You won’t have to,” Leila said. Her voice was hoarse from crying and cracked halfway through.

  “Good.” He touched her lightly on the shoulder. “I really am sorry. Failing the Challenge is emotionally crushing. You should find something to look forward to, even if it is something as simple as your next meal. You do have a future waiting for you, if you’re able to find it. Now come. The dirigible is leaving in a few minutes.”

  Leila dreaded the walk to the dirigible.
She imagined everyone they passed in the hallways staring at her. She didn’t know what would be worse, the looks of pity or the looks of contempt.

  They stepped out into the tight hallway and Leila kept her head down, hoping nobody would recognize her. Leila didn’t see anyone else until they had left the Challenge auditorium and its associated rooms behind. She thought the entire habitat had been evacuated until they reached the main thoroughfare running along the outer edge of the habitat rings.

  She hadn’t seen anyone earlier because the entire population of the habitat was involved in the rescue efforts. People were rushing back and forth, carrying air tanks, exposure suits, tools, and materials. Along the outer side of the hallway under the panoramic windows looking out over the cloudscape, bodies wrapped in sheets were laid head to foot.

  Leila followed close to the proctor, for the first time understanding the magnitude of the disaster that had struck the habitat. Shame dug its claws into her throat and she choked on it. She had been so caught up in her lost future that she hadn’t given a second thought to the men and women who had their lives ended abruptly. Not all the sheets she passed her adult sized. Children had died as well, children who hadn’t had the opportunity to live even as much as she already had.

  None of the people passing by spared her so much as a glance. They were intent on saving their home and the lives of those who hadn’t been killed by atmosphere exposure. Derision for the girl who had failed her Challenge couldn’t have been further from their minds.

  This is what she had pulled the proctor away from. The calls she had ignored had been to instruct her to make her own way to the dirigible. Her noncompliance had made it necessary for the proctor to escort her. She had prevented him from carrying out the vastly more important task of saving the habitat.

  Even so, the proctor had treated her with nothing but kindness. He could have been furious with her or derided her for her breakdown.

  They reached the dirigible docks and the proctor checked his tablet to refresh his memory on which airlock they wanted before hurrying to the third airlock in the bank. The rebreather masks had all been stripped from the lockers by emergency responders.

  The proctor turned away, frustrated, to search for a mask for her, but Leila caught his sleeve.

  “It’s okay. Other people need the masks more than I do.”

  He frowned down at her. “Regulations–”

  “Are less important than someone dying because they didn’t have a mask. I’ll manage.”

  The proctor jerked his head in a nod before initiating the airlock cycle. “Thanks, Leila. But I don’t feel good about it, though. I’ll walk you over to the dirigible.”

  “Even if the gantry is compromised I can hold my breath that long,” Leila shook her head. “You have more important things to be doing.”

  The airlock cycled open and Leila stepped in. “I’m sorry about earlier,” she said. “Thank you for your patience with me.”

  The proctor looked torn but nodded finally. “You’re not a bad kid, Leila. The matriarchs set a high bar for themselves. I hope you can find a way to be happy.”

  Leila nodded, her vision blurry with sudden tears. “Stay safe.”

  There was more she wanted to say, but the airlock doors slid shut with a snick of finely machined parts sealing. She was alone. The proctor had been the last connection with her life prior to the Challenge. Now she had nobody she could turn to, nobody who knew her, nobody who cared what happened to her.

  The outer doors of the airlock opened and the narrow gantry leading to the dirigible stretched away in front of her. She took a careful breath and caught the acrid scent of atmosphere in the air. The carbon dioxide alarms weren’t going off, though, which meant the breach had been a temporary thing, probably when the habitat had been in the thick of the storm.

  The gantry might have been safe, but she hurried across anyway. There was no sense in prolonging things. She reached the dirigible and saw it was the same class as the ones her mother used to ferry large shipments of produce to other habitats. She initiated the airlock cycle and the door slid open immediately. They were waiting for her. Feeling self-conscious, she stepped in and cycled the airlock through.

  Inside the dirigible, the light was dim and the air was musky with the scent of stale sweat. The high ceiling of the cargo bay had been subdivided with a temporary floor of expanded steel platforms. There were several dozen people crowded into the claustrophobic space, lining the wall benches and standing in tight knots. The level above seemed packed with cargo crates.

  “You Leila?” Leila nodded to the bearded man and he tapped something into his tablet. “Good,” he grunted. “You’re the last one. Find a spot to sit, if you can. It’s a long ride back to Nueva Angela.”

  The man pushed his way forward, leaving Leila to her own devices. The men and women about her looked ominous in the dim light. They had the weathered look of extras, the laborers who worked outside the habitats.

  A little timidly, she made her way aft. The throb of the engines there would make conversation difficult, and hopefully discourage people from talking to her. She hadn’t made it more than five paces when a knot of men in front of her stepped apart and blocked her path.

  She made an apologetic sound and tried to walk around, but the man in front of her, an older fellow with streaks of white in his bristly beard, sidestepped with her and blocked her again.

  “Sorry,” Leila said, having to half-shout to be heard over the engines, “I’m trying to get through.”

  The man ignored her, and simply moved to block her when she tried to go around him. Leila got the point. For whatever reason, the man and his friends didn’t want her going to the rear of the gondola. Feeling unreasonably upset by the wordless refusal, Leila turned around and walked toward the bow of the ship.

  She would not cry. She might not have passed the Challenge, but she had been raised by a matriarch.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “I’m not–” Leila scrubbed the back of her wrists over her eyes. “Screw you. Go away.”

  “Sorry. Sorry. Uh,” the man held out his hand. “I’m Jackson. Jackson Harding, from Nueva Angela.”

  Leila glared at him until he dropped his hand. Closer inspection showed he was in his mid-teens, only a year or two older than she was.

  “Okay, um. Look, don’t take it hard, Wharton is an asshole, right? The only reason he isn’t screaming his head off is because we landed a big bonus for being first responders to the meteor strike.”

  She perked up at that. “You were there?”

  “Sure. I, uh, I have a place forward with my crew chief. There’s not much room to sit, but it’s out of sight of those guys. If you like, you can come sit with us.”

  Leila nodded, filled with a burning desire to know if her mother had survived. “I’m Leila. Thanks. For coming over. You didn’t have to do that.”

  Jackson shrugged and grinned. “I’ve been all alone enough to recognize it in someone else.” He held out his hands in a gentling gesture. “You don’t need to tell me your story or anything. But I know it helps to know a friendly face.”

  “And you’re that? Friendly, I mean?”

  “I’d like to think so,” Jackson shrugged again. “Friendlier than Wharton, though that isn’t saying much.”

  Jackson had led Leila forward and they ducked through a low-hanging partition. The room beyond was cramped but had a porthole that brought welcome light into the space.

  “This is Millicent, my chief. That’s Laud. Guys, this is Leila.”

  Millicent looked up from her tablet and smiled briefly at Leila. “Making friends, Jackson?”

  Laud eyed Leila and snugged his cap down over his face with a grumbling mutter.

  “Hello,” Leila said, a little put off by Laud’s cold shoulder. But at least Millicent hadn’t throw her out.

  “Wharton has half the space sectioned off with his men,” Jackson said. “He wouldn’t let Leila through, so I didn’t
even try.”

  The chief nodded shortly. “Thanks for looking into that, Jackson.”

  “What’s it mean? What is he hiding?”

  “I don’t care,” Millicent said frankly. “And neither should you. Nothing good will come from nosing about in that man’s business. We got our bonus, let’s just lay low and get home.”

  “Why’d you send me if you don’t care?”

  Millicent shook her head and picked her tablet back up again. “He’s probably smuggling something. If your conscience demands it, report him to the port authority when we arrive. But be aware that it will only make life difficult for you.”

  Jackson frowned and opened his mouth, but Leila touched his arm, distracting him. “Sorry. You were there? At the hull breach?”

  “Millicent and I were the first ones on the scene,” Jackson said proudly.

  “By accident,” Laud pointed out, his face still mostly covered by his cap.

  “Did anyone survive?”

  “Sure. The closed doors kept all but a trickle of the atmosphere from getting into the rooms further from the breach, so a lot of people in the deeper parts of the habitat came through it all right.”

  Leila thought about the bodies lining the corridor on the approach to the airlocks. “But not everyone.”

  “No.” Jackson shivered a little and his eyes looked haunted for a moment. “Not everyone.”

  “There was a, uh, a matriarch I met once. I was hoping to see her, but then the accident... She, uh, worked in the sector that was damaged.” Leila fumbled her way through the lie. “She had long, dark hair that she kept in a plait.”

  Millicent lowered her tablet and looked at Leila for a moment. Leila flushed, and Millicent’s eyes widened slightly. A look of pained recognition came over Millicent’s face, and she lowered her gaze back down to her tablet.

  “Oh! Yes, there was a matriarch like that. We rescued her and her friend first.” Jackson nodded happily, eager to give the good news and completely oblivious.

  Leila closed her eyes. Relief pulled fresh tears from her and she rubbed them away. Her mother was alive. “Oh. I’m… glad.”