THE MOON IS POISONED
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A written creative work submitted to the faculty of
San Francisco State University
In partial fulfillment of
The requirements for
The Degree
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Master of Fine Arts
In
Creative Writing
By
Elizabeth Chantal Kaida
San Francisco, California
May 2016
Copyright by
Elizabeth Chantal Kaida
2016
CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read The Moon Is Poisoned by Elizabeth Chantal Kaida, and that in
my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirement for the degree: Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at
San Francisco State University.
o
n
Peter Omer
Professor of Creative Writing
Andrew Joron I
Assistant Professor, Creative Writing
THE MOON IS POISONED
Elizabeth Chantal Kaida
San Francisco, California
2016
The Moon is Poisoned is a novel set in a futuristic world where humanity has begun
colonizing the Libra Galaxy. People have been forced to adapt their physiology for
survival. The protagonist, Asami Five, gets caught between three civilizations in conflict
over one planet.
My novel seeks to deal with the concepts of human technological
advancements to the point where humanity and technology blur. It addresses questions of
technology influencing artificial life, engineered life, and life after death. Are people still
human when they are run by machines, and what moral lines will the nature of humanity
cross for survival?
I certify that the abstract is a correct representation of the content of this written creative
work.
Chair, Thesis Committee
Date
li
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to say thank you to my parents; to my father for always being so supportive,
and to my mother who is my best friend, and a great artist and wordsmith. You have both
allowed space for this novel to find its way.
Also a huge thanks to Nona Caspers. You have encouraged me to keep writing into this
world, experimenting with “hot spots,” finding a voice, and pursuing the drama as well as
the art.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue: ................................................................................................................................. 2
Chapter 1 :................................................................................................................................ 9
Chapter 2 : ...............................................................................................................................21
Chapter 3 : ...........................
30
Chapter 4 : ...............................................................................................................................44
Chapter 5 : ............................................................................................................................... 63
Chapter 6 : .............................................................................................................................. 81
Chapter 7 : ............................................................................................................................. 101
Chapter 8:.............................................................................................................................. 118
Chapter 9 : ............................................................................................................................. 129
Chapter 1 0 :........................................................................................................................... 140
Chapter 1 1 :........................................................................................................................... 156
1
"The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther
they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon."
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Ken Kesey
2
Prologue
Gliese: Date 2373
“The report ma’am.”
“Has she complied?” Heidi stood as a courtesy, but then sat down, her mind
elsewhere. She rubbed at the sides of her forehead fighting a headache where her chip
hummed beneath her flesh. Her skin felt loose and weak these days, like tissue paper.
She wondered if she pulled hard enough, if it would tear right off, like an android’s
synthetic flesh. It was the stress, the isolation. Her chip storage was almost completely
inaccessible to the Growth Kids, and even to Declan who ran security. She envied the
early days on Earth, when each new batch of children were a wonder to design and watch
grow. Conversations had become so one-sided these days.
It was inevitable, some of
that distance, but lately she wondered if she had moved too fast. Perhaps the first batches
of Growth Kids should have been filtered into more authoritative roles before this
venture. Though she did not have so strong a link as the children did to one another, the
newest batches seemed almost to function like one organ, knowing more about one
another than the chip had ever been designed to share, she was not fool enough to believe
they were not beginning to question her. It was as though the whole colony had
3
regressed, a teenage rebellious spirit was pervasive. She had been keeping a close eye on
Asami Five ever since the young woman had woken from cryogenics the second time,
depressed, nervous, and closed off. Heidi had taken to mining the young woman’s
android for information Asami wouldn’t give her. But even the android had adapted over
the years. The chip had somehow expanded her capacities beyond protocol.
“She’s responded. I don’t know if you could call it complying.” Declan said.
“Upload it directly.”
The file appeared in Heidi’s mind feed, a shiny second vision which overlapped
the real world. She liked to keep her vision clear, but lately she had left multiple files
open, always gleaming at her from the side’s of her vision like silvery water flashing in
the comer of her eye. The Report pulsed into existence and Heidi swept the second
vision out of her periphery and into direct sight, her desk blurring into a gray background.
She felt a familiar flush of irritation at the sight of Cloey’s document filled with slashes
and side comments. The android had grown increasingly snarky despite the memory
wipes, as if a residual feeling of anger could not be scrubbed from her system, even if the
memories of their encounters had been—an interesting study on its own, but an
increasing annoyance given the circumstances.
Android Beta Model 2G3 Report--:Cloey's Confessions:
4
(Let's not pretend this is a civil interrogation.)
I know
what you want Heidi, and it's not a report, you want to
know what Asami is thinking from the POV of someone close
to her.
All such backstabbery aside, *redacted insult*, I
will give you the upload.
Let's start at the beginning.
You allowed your genetic engineers to experiment with
physical traits on a batch of babies who will never know
their parents because they are literally donated sperm and
eggs.
These scientists turn Asami into a blond, blue eyed,
Chinese woman.
Don't get me wrong, I think she looks
exotic/fabulous and should work her style hard, but then
you gave her the personality of an introspective analyst
and you want to know why she's self-conscious. Don't get me
wrong, she is perfection, but can you see the conflict
here? Thanks.
You freeze pack Asami on a spaceship in a cryo gel
tube,
(that's like sleeping in snail slime) ew, and then
wake her up to tell her she has a billion new siblings and
you don't really remember her, ouch.
Thank the beautiful,
5
cherub-cheeked engineer who made me age resilient, because
Asami needed me when she woke up out of that goo cocoon.
So, Asami goes looking for Sam, AKA, her huge crush
(which you also forgot about), cause you have like a
bazillion pasty space-born children whose genetic design
you have probably perfected.
Asami finds lover-boy in a
quarantined hospital ward suffering from the after effects
of the cryo tube, now known as a Bad Freeze, and you kill
lover-boy while "treating" him.
I think Asami's trust
issues with you begin around this point in the timeline,
don't you?
Fast-forward half a year, Asami is meeting her new,
pasty sibs, having adopted the profiling term Freezy as
opposed to the new space-born child-models who are calling
themselves Ghosts.
You then pack Asami back into her cyro-
pod, once she has served her half-year shift awake, and she
suffers from a Bad Freeze.
Only no one diagnosed her,
which seems to have worked in her favor cause she's not
dead, yet.
6
We land on our beautiful new planet Gliese, only to
discover the first colony is missing, but you take us
planet-side anyways.
Now here is the part that is not your fault.
Asami's
Bad Freeze turns out to have been a result from an alien
species trapping her mind in some freaky dreamscape on
Gliese.
Apparently the Freeze condition left the patients
vulnerable to mental attacks because oooonly Freeze
patients have been affected Given that I'm Asami's bunk
mate, I got to listen to her nightmare screams about some
creature named Waheed and his habit of murdering humans.
Yea, that's taken years out of my beauty rest.
aliens don't like us apparently.
again.
These
Now this is your fault
While setting up our new colony, Asami's work team
gets attacked by the native aliens, and Maxi dies in front
of Asami's eyes.
But you do not believe Asami, and are now forcing her
to get a chip installed in her brain, even knowing that she
has issues about the chip making her feel less human.
Sincerely,
You—*Redacted insult*,
7
Cloey
End Report
Heidi stretched her legs, walking to the window. There was nothing in the report
she did not already know, except how long Asami had been hiding her Bad Freeze—that
rankled. Heidi should have spotted the signs sooner. If it were true, if some alien species
were present on the planet, it was her job to protect Earth’s interests in the Growth
Project. What kind of mind could cross space in light-years? On the long journey to
Gliese, there had been cases, but the doctors had attributed the Bad Freeze to
hallucinations. She would know soon enough, once Asami’s chip surgery was over.
Then Heidi would see for herself what Asami had experienced. She would look through
the woman’s memories until she found the answers, even if it meant forcing Asami to
relive every traumatic moment of her repressed freeze dreams. This was a matter of
saving all her children.
“What did you have to promise her in return?” Heidi asked.
“Noninterference, that her programming would not be touched again.” Declan
had made himself at home in her chair. He looked like a giant, his frame overflowing the
delicate, white quilted arms, his shoulders above the shallow back. His once black hair
was almost completely gray-white now.
“And?”
8
“We used some emotional persuasion.” Declan picked up her silvery pen from its
seashell holder. She had brought the pen holder from Earth, in case she never saw an
ocean again.
“You tortured her?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. No physical harm, no. Just showed her what she was.
That we could turn her emotions on and off, and fear, depression, those are hard to
resist.”
“Erase her memories and backup programs from the moment you collected her.
Let her imagine she had a routine checkup.” Heidi looked back to the window, but her
attention was looking inward, accessing a feed stream through the eyes of one of her
growth children, White Nine. Asami was laid out on the surgical table, prepped for
surgery.
“I think we should erase her program. She has, devolved, in my opinion.”
Declan twirled the pen. Heidi refocused on him, removing the pen and seashell holder
from his grip.
“The android is my only bargaining chip with Asami.”
“Everyone has more than one weakness.”
“That will be all Commander.” Heidi returned once more to the feed. She
wanted to make sure Asami’s chip surgery went well, even if that meant watching the
entire procedure.
9
Chapter One
Sometimes, the sensation of ice on your skin can feel like heat. Joy can manifest
itself like pain. A smooth rock can appear slimy to your fingertips. The brain can tell
your body many things, and they don’t have to be true. It is the most lovely, and faulty,
organ in the human body; and no one has been able to fix it.
-Dr. Morgan Vasco
Gliese: Date 2373
Three, icy, little wires fiddled inside her patient’s brain. White Nine remembered
the sensation: all chip surgeries were done semiconscious, not awake enough to know
what was happening, but enough to track the brain’s response to the chip’s insertion.
This new technique could feel like tickling inside the scalp, and this chip was so small it
could be fed into the brain through the nose. The middle wire carried a surgical camera
which streamed into White Nine’s own mental chip giving her what she liked to call, a
mind link with her patients. Sometimes she would close her eyes during surgery, to
better concentrate on the inner camera. Even tinier surgical spatulas pushed the wet brain
tissue around the chip, which would be digested by the brain until it became a part of its
apparatus. Once it had been absorbed, it could be turned on.
White Nine took a moment of unprofessional curiosity to observe the brain tissue
itself, white and gray flesh pulsing with blood. She wondered what was so particularly
10
special about patient Asami Five, that Heidi had mandated a rushed chip insertion, or that
Alec couldn’t keep his eyes off her even when he was talking with the fiercest Ghosts
space-side. Anyone within ten feet of Alec would get chip spammed with images of
Asami, a mistake most six-year-olds had learned not to make. These pictures would burp
into existence on the chip’s feed, flashing into everyone’s regular vision like an alert and
then pulsing in their periphery demanding attention, without him seeming to notice. Dull
images: like Asami picking tomatoes, Asami looking at mold, Asami scowling at dirt as
she passed in the hall.
White Nine supposed the current fuss over Asami had to do with the recent
murder of Maxi Four. The compound was humming with talk of her death at the
Seaweed Farm, but no one seemed to know exactly how it happened, except Asami.
White Nine scrutinized the brain before her. So organically orderly, she marveled at the
brain’s ability to unconsciously dispense with unneeded information; so unlike the young
woman’s file, which was a complete mess. Asami’s care-giving android, Cloey, had
given regular reports of Asmai’s health, but they were in no intelligent order, and half of
them didn’t seem to pertain to Asami’s health at all. Most of them read like diary entrees
or fashion blogs. White Nine braced herself as she brought up the patient’s medical log
in her mind, skimming through the text. The file was so large that for a moment it caused
the vid-link to lag, and White Nine froze her hands to keep from blindly poking her
patient’s brain.
11
Day 8397 of Asami's life, minus 7320 days in freeze, I
refuse to view Asami as an old woman, her body-clock was
scientifically frozen and she isn't a day over 23 and I am
even younger. Asami is wearing that dreadful uniform again
that makes her look like a white twig swimming in navy. If
Heidi would only take my recommendation on dress code...
White Nine skimmed down. She had been told that on Earth androids were
protected by some law called the Charter, but out here? It wasn’t practical to have such
sloppy medical reports. The entrees were almost daily, but they were uncategorized,
nothing had been stored in the permanent medical record beyond what other doctors had
noted. Most Growth Kid files had between ten and fifty entrees and all of them were
related to a specific injury. Asami’s file was longer than a novel series. These prototype
nurse androids got over-attached to their charges as if they were actually family, not just
a monitor. This model in particular seemed to have no sensor to discern important
information from irrelevant. White Nine tried to search for hot words, fever, body
temperature... Ah, something of interest.
...Asami's body temperature raises during these night
terror episodes to 101.2 F.
But when I wake her, she
returns to a normal 98.4 F.
Regular entrees of disturbed sleep after the second freeze never reported on the
patient’s permanent medical record. White Nine pursed her lips. She was glad she had
12
grown up with a third gen care-giver in group growth. Third gen’s were non-interfering,
caring for children only when they had received physical injury, and leaving the social
nurturing to the children as a group. It was weird that some of the Freezy’s preferred
robotic company to their own flesh and blood. White Nine could not imagine putting all
her affection into a program, which could glitch, and would inevitably expire. In
contrast, she had ten siblings who had lived every single day in sync with her since she
was bom. She had ten real people who knew and loved her, and whom she loved in
return.
The care-giver was also problematic. Cloey was beginning to protect Asami’s
wishes over her physical health, an irregularity in care-giver protocols which she, as a
nurse, should report. Asami’s nightmare screams and fever should have been treated
immediately, for not only her health, but also all the other children who may have
suffered similarly in Freeze. She should have been included in a case study. With a new
chip, White Nine would strongly recommend that the patient should dispense with the
android altogether.
White Nine scanned the official record as she waited for the patient’s brain to
satisfactorily cover the chip. The patient was an Earth birth, batch five, genetically
manipulated in appearance with only the first level of personality manipulation. She was
over forty-two years old Resolute time, though through cryogenic preservation she was
physically twenty-three. Other than that, her record was disappointingly sparse.
13
Having been raised in batch nine, White Nine had never even seen the big blue
planet called Earth, except in Holo Logs. The first time she saw a planet with her own
eyes was three weeks ago on Viewing Day. She had climbed on the bar counter to see
their new home planet, Gliese, over the other children’s heads. Gliese had glowed
through the windows of the Spaceship Resolute like a small sun, half golden sand storm
clouds and half bluish black mist. Its rotation fixed, not spinning as the Earth did around
the sun, but as the moon did round the Earth, showing only one side towards its red dwarf
star. White Nine had circled Gliese’s circumference with both hands through the
window. Holding it like an egg, it had seemed so small and mysterious she had cheered
along with all her Growth siblings.
Planet-side, she hardly knew where to look, there was so much space. It was
frightening, the way the land rolled on, further than she could see, to meet the sky line in
the desert. If she looked towards the dark side of the planet, the mountains and snow
caped dunes formed a rolling edge, as though someone had painted the mountains up
against the night sky, the snowcaps phosphorescent beneath the bone-white moon. She
had grown up knowing every inch of her world aboard the Resolute. The kitchen was
sixty steps from her bedroom, the Holo-Lab a mere 30 steps. She could walk round the
entire Resolute Spaceship in under an hour. Her world had been contained, and space
outside the ship had been infinite, but no one had gone beyond the walls. Planet-side
was like being set adrift in space, she could walk her entire life, and never retrace her
footsteps.
14
Looking at the small woman before her, White Nine could see physical
differences between them. Asami was small and more compact than the thin and tall
Ghost children bom ship-side. White Nine felt waifish and ungrounded in comparison,
her limbs thinner as if stretched, her muscles almost invisible, her skin translucent. There
was a reason the Freezy’s had called the space-born batches Ghosts. They were almost
see-through in comparison, their every vein visible. A Ghost could have rice paper or
translucently purple flesh, but a Freezy’s skin had spots, and their flesh ranged from
chalky white and pink to caramels so dark they matched space outside the ship. Many of
the Freezy’s were also more exotic looking. Asami herself had a strangely washed away
look, her complexion darker than her hair. Perhaps that was what Alec found attractive
about her, that difference.
Asami’s brain also looked different. A brain having undergone cryogenics often
showed residual effects from the freeze serum, which repaired what had been damaged
during the freeze state. While White Nine couldn’t see damage with her own eyes, she
thought there was a shade of blue to the patient’s brain. She sharpened the camera lens
around the chip. She could swear there were residual blue crystals enmeshed in the brain
cells. There shouldn’t be any crystals left a year out of freeze unless the patient’s brain
was in a constant state of repair, but there was no sign of sickness or degradation. Could
the night terrors be a symptom of some illness? A Bad Freeze? The image of contorted
faces and foaming lips came to mind. Foreheads slick with sweat, the veins pulsing and
glowing blue. The ones who went mad. Those patients had always been violent. Was
15
that what happened to Maxi at the Seaweed Farm? White Nine began to sweat, the cool
operating air freezing her perspiration on her hot skin. She double checked the sedative
balance. The patient was still well dosed.
When Heidi proposed chipping all the crew after landing, Nurse White’s
supervisor had voiced concerns that the chip would be rejected by the Freezy’s bodies
until the residual of the serum had been exhausted from the subject’s system. The serum
might mark a chip as an anomaly in the brain added in after the serum was introduced.
Only time would tell, most of the Freezy’s had gone into cryo already chipped.
In the vid-link, White Nine could make out tiny blue cryo crystals detaching from
the brain walls and twinkling as the floated to stick on the new chip. More crystals
migrated to the chip as it sunk into the patient’s brain. It was like watching bees
swarming over their nest. A nervous tremor crept down White Nine’s spine. She braced
her arms to keep the wires still in the patient’s nose. What would happen if her
supervisor had been correct? Would the procedure trigger a latent reaction to freeze and
tip the patient into madness?
The frozen gleam of the blue cryo crystals began to fill White Nine’s vision as if
she were looking into a crystal cavern. The glowing gray flesh transformed. Blue
crystals grew and pulsed along the brain walls, as if they were alive, like mold. She
almost shut down the vid-link, leaving herself blind for the extraction. What are you
doing, she berated herself for allowing the hallucination to persist. Her real eyes sprang
open. She looked up at the mirror in the room, slightly dusty and grainy around the rim,
16
and blinked the residual glow of blue from her sight. Her eyes looked back, comfortably
brown. A holographic view of a field, tall brown weeds with seedy tops swayed back and
forth beneath a hot, orange, Earthen sun, which glowed from the walls. These were old
images that could be looked at as though through a window. She had been told they were
meant to sooth and relax Earth bom patients with familiar sights. The images just made
Nurse White feel nervous, the way the wind pulled at the grain stalks. She had never
experienced weather before landing day, and wind had frightened her most, the way it
could build up and tug at her legs. She had been taught that wind could grow into a
funnel storm, so strong that it carried whole buildings away.
The chip was satisfactorily secure so she began to extract the wires from the
patient’s nostril, hastily, as her hands, normally so steady and sure, had a visible tremor.
The wires stilled in the metal surgical pan, stained red and slightly slimed. She felt
irritable and warm at her unprofessional laps in concentration. She would report the
cryogenic crystal anomalies in her surgical report and she would be done with Asami
Five. She had completed her job masterfully, and that was something to be proud of.
The Elders had made her for surgery, and she was the best at it of all her colleagues.
When the patient regained consciousness, she could impart the good news. The chip was
almost ready to activate.
17
The Susurri watched the colony of worm-people from the night-side of the planet.
Invisible to the human eye, they crouched upon the tops of the snowy dunes circling the
human’s tower. Their sticky, starfish shaped hands rooting through the ice and snow to
scrape up the slimy blue algae from the rocks, the hairs covering every inch of their
bodies reacted to the wind, hardening against its slicing nips, and loosening and swaying
to absorb the sights and smells of the air that teamed with newness from the colony
below. Their large, double lidded eyes gazed restlessly upwards at the night sky, peering
through constellations towards the strange solar system where the worm-people had
come.
The Susurri were not accustomed to staying in one moment, and their minds
drifted backwards through the ages of their ancestors and forwards into time that was and
could be. They observed the futures knowing they would have to act, but waiting for the
right time. Time shifted in brilliant shades, each vein of color was a change in outcome,
a new decision by a worm-person or Susurri—an aurora of possibility. The Susurri
followed these threads forwards, to see where they would lead, and how many would be
lost. The sharp wind on their wet noses brought them back to the present, and their
luminous eyes dropped back, lazily, to study the small, hairless creatures as they
swarmed throughout their nest.
Waheed had dipped into many worm-people’s minds after the first Sasurri death.
He had found the language to name the newcomers. Their minds were very limited,
confined to a linear stream of time, but they had so many words, so many new smells and
18
tastes and inventions. Like the worms of their home planet, they ate their way through
time, tunneling blindly through dirt. It was impossible to reason with such creatures, to
make them go back to their home, they remained so intensely present, the past a dull
mirror, the future a blank wall.
The first infestation was less volatile than this new colony. The first worm people
had been more of one mind and purpose. Waheed had sent out scouts to lure the Wormpeople to their death, exposing them to the Dead Valley which carried with it sickness.
To the Susurri, this sickness brought on new life, a failing of the body for a short time,
but an unleashing of the mind. To the worm-people, this sickness melted their minds and
bodies. The colony had fled their nest, covered in sickness, and Waheed had turned his
eyes space-ward, looking for where the strange pests had come from only to find more on
their way.
He had reached through space and tested many of the new worm-people’s minds.
Some had been easy to access. Their bodies frozen, their minds blank and unguarded.
He had walked in these minds to learn about them. Most of them had traps, small painful
chips that bit back when Waheed tried to make contact. These chips secreted stinging
currents that emitted from something called electronics. Searching the rest of the ship,
Waheed found that the worm-people left these creations around like the Susurri fostered
algae, which grew beneath the snow, hidden and spreading. These electronics were the
same as the previous worm-colony, and they produced currents that altered the magnetic
structure of time in Susurri minds.
19
Waheed had tried to speak with the safe worm-people, the un-chipped as they
called themselves. He had plucked their minds from sleep and pulled them through space
to Gliese. He held their minds with his own, allowed them to walk amongst the Susurri.
At first he had probed them for information and then he spoke with them. But they were
difficult to understand; their minds moved too quickly fluttering from subject to subject
as fast as breath. Nor could they stretch their minds out to see the future even with
Waheed’s help. When Waheed tried to show one its future, its own death, it could not
separate the fiction from reality and seemed to experience real death. When he released
the worm-people back to their own, the new colony seemed to sense a difference in
Waheed’s messengers and instead of turning back, the worm-people had killed off the
one’s Waheed had tried to talk with, as if he had infected them. So he tried again. One
female’s mind was not poisonous, her mind was more flexible and long lasting than the
others, but she was slow and stupid, denying that Waheed existed.
The new infestation was more dangerous, and Waheed watched their approach
with curiosity, learning as much as he could about them. All the Susurri watched, the
same way stars blink at planets. Time didn’t have the same applications. Hours were
days. Days were seconds.
The first humans had left behind a half circle of domes surrounding a great
central tower with heavy floating rings suspended in the air. The new worm-people lived
inside these rings, and planted new things into the dead earth, much like the Susurri’s
algae, but smelly. The smells were weapons too; they clouded the Susurri’s senses.
Sharp, spicy smells the humans called mint, sage, and thyme.
Drinking in the greenery called pine trees that had grown tall like icicles, the
Susurri waited. They stirred once and a while to dislodge the piles of snow gathering
along their backs and shoulders, as powerful as the worm-people’s gorillas resting on
their fists. Their hair, which covered their entire bodies except their large nocturnal eyes,
swayed loose, tasting, smelling, wondering, hungering. Soon, the right vein of time
would present itself, and the watching would blend into the time for flattening the wormpeople’s minds.
21
Chapter Two
Upon waking from a sleep that lasted years I had a wonderful thought; but all thoughts
are wonderful when you find you are pleased to be woken.
-Cloey
Asami was surprised to find her body resting on its side, as if someone had
walked her in her sleep to a table, lifted her up, and flopped her sideways on her arm.
Cold plastic, so cold that it felt wet on her palms, met her hands as she lifted herself up.
She was perched atop a padded table-chair, a workman’s table, meant for messes, for
blood. Her body hummed with weak energy; her arms trembled slightly as she pushed
upright, her forehead filled with the buzz of a caffeinated bee. Her body seemed to be
urging her to get up, get out, but when she tried to stand everything blurred and wouldn’t
stop slanting. The room was trying to make her lay down again. The overly bright white
floor curved up the walls towards flashing metal mirrors.
She squinted as the dull pain between her eyes grew to a throb. With the pain, the
room began to settle around her. Cabinetry slid back towards the floor and moving
holographic ads on the walls with white teethed doctors and nurses looked less like
whirling cyclones of blue and white. Something about their perfect ceramic teeth
frightened Asami; their mouths looked so strong as if their bite could crush an apple
whole—horse’s teeth. Her fingers pinched the tip of her nose, squeezing it, but her sense
22
of touch only went through her fingers. It felt as though someone had stuck a false nose
on her, smooth and weirdly warm.
The operating room was empty. The tan counters lining the walls were empty.
The floor was tiled brown and had dust rolls in the comers. A new, fist sized robot was
rolling around the comers of the room, attacking the dust with gulping swallows that
seemed to simply propel the gray clouds before it in a never ending game of chase. On a
metal side table, the nurse had left three impossibly long wires. Drops of red blood had
pooled on the clear metal surface and congealed.
Asami’s fingers cupped her left, raw nostril and slid up towards her forehead
feeling for a cut, an opening. Chipped. Disappointment settled over her mind like black
cobwebs sticking to her every thought. The urgency receded from her muscles.
Somewhere beneath her skull was a spotless, shiny, blue filmed, standard chip. Not thick
and square like the one she had gotten for Cloey, but paper thin and sleek. Her hands ran
through her hair, searching for a lump. Nothing.
Nurse White appeared as if summoned by her thoughts, and Asami took stock of
her mind to see if she had called the woman, if the chip had called. But there was
nothing, just darkness in her mind, the hum of a heavy machine like a giant freezer, the
sound of Nurse White’s practical, black, low-heeled boots.
Asami’s chest constricted and she ducked her head, knowing her face must look
white and drawn, sickly. She wanted to crawl to her room and lay in bed for days in her
misery, but she knew the other Freezys and Ghosts would laugh at her for such dramatics.
23
It was just a chip. She hadn’t lost her brain, or her arm, or her life. But she had lost a
sense of herself being normal. She could almost feel small electrical wires emerged from
her chip like a black shiny melon seed sprouting delicate white roots.
“Drink.” Nurse White pushed a small paper cup with red syrup to her lips. “It
will settle your stomach.”
It certainly wasn’t having a settling effect on Asami. Her stomach revolted
against the scent of raspberries. She had only thrown up once. She remembered pink
juice pooling on her dirt stained white floor back in her childhood bedroom. She had
coaxed Erika into a drinking game, slurping up as much raspberry ice as they could, and
waiting for the cold to shoot up into their brains to simulate what freeze might feel like.
Cloey, then still expressionless and pillow centered, like any other care-taking android,
had regarded her for a moment, head tilted like a quizzical raven, and then she had shown
the first spark of Cloey-ness. “That’s a very pretty color on your lips.” She had
chirruped mechanically. “You could make it a lip gloss for your friends. Call it
Razliplicious, cause it makes your mouth look delicious.” Cloey continued as she
cleaned Asami up, wiping the red stain from her cheeks and clothes but leaving her
mouth wet and shiny like a cherry. Asami had peeked into the mirror as Cloey returned
to her robotic self, scrubbing the floor as if Asami had only dropped a spoonful of peas.
There had always remained a pink stain on the glassy floor, like a birth mark, round and
uneven. How she wanted Cloey to take care of her now.
24
She took the cup. It looked like blood on the verge of drying into gel. Glints of
steel and electronic flashes of light glinted from all the metal knobs and bars in the room.
White paper crinkled under her thighs. Pale sunlight dappled her dangling bare legs. The
sight of her feet, sticky with traces of seaweed dried on her ankle and mud-crusted
between her toes, reminded her again of why Cloey needed to leave the compound.
Waheed was coming. He had warned her in freeze dreams, and then again at the
Seaweed Farm when he attacked Maxi. Asami’s stomach clenched and heaved a little as
she remembered the scene.
Maxi had been floating before Asami, her planked form rotating with the current
as still as driftwood. The wind had risen, whistling through the tall weeds on the edge of
the pond, the warmth of the sun whisked away by the biting snowy breath of the white
icy dunes behind the Compound. Asami had felt something shift in the air, a warning,
like breath on the back of her neck. Then Maxi had been tom under the water, a large
splash spouting in the air, the water roiling white until the foam turned frothy red. The
surface of the pond had mellowed into slow churning, the foam solidifying into glossy
pink bubbles. A red cloud had spread beneath the clear surface floating towards Asami.
She had stood mute, struck still, her muscles cemented as though she had been filled up
with aged glue and it seemed she had turned to plastic. Then her blood began to pound
again, crashing back into her body like a cymbal’s bong echoing through her blood.
Maxi’s body surfaced and began to move towards the far end of the pond. For a brief
moment, Asami had lied to herself, she had believed Maxi was dragging herself,
25
scissoring through the water towards the shore, towards safety. Then Asami noticed the
wrongness of Maxi’s movements, the way her muscles lay limp, the sharp angle of her
neck. The body was being dragged; Maxi’s mouth was open and catching at the water
like a plugged drain, the water splashed out again. The body reached the opposite side of
the pond and Maxi was lifted upwards, her arms and legs dangling. It looked for a
moment as if the water itself were carrying her, cradling her. Rivulets trickled down a
huge mass, shaped like a giant, see-through bear, all hair and muscle. The watery mirage
paused, its eyes suddenly visible, glowing across the water at Asami, two burning orbs in
a phantom’s face. Eyes that held the night sky in their depths blinked at her before the
creature shook its thick mass loose of the reflective, glistening water droplets. The
mirage evaporated, the eyes disappeared, and it seemed as though the wind itself dragged
Maxi by the arm across the sandy shore towards the sun.
Waheed and his people would attack anything with a chip in it, and Cloey, Cloey
was Cloey because of the chip. The chip allowed her to have a personality; it was part of
her brain now. Waheed wouldn’t even take Cloey’s body. He would rend it, smash it,
and burry it like refuse. Asami couldn’t let her be tom apart like Maxi.
Asami drank the syrup. It landed in her stomach leaden and sour.
“Look straight ahead.” Nurse White said, and leaned forward, looking into her
eyes, peering through her. The nurse held up a thin light that traced over her scalp above
her eyebrows. Was that where the chip was?
26
Asami had never seen this nurse before but that was no surprise, she didn’t know
half the colony. There had been over eight-hundred of them before the freeze, now their
number was closer to two-thousand. Nurse White looked like a Ghost trainee, white as
ash with deep brown eyes and charcoal eyebrows, the type of contrast you only see with
children whose hair had never been faded by light, and whose skin has never tanned. She
couldn't be more than seventeen, Asami thought, a teenager, playing inside her brain.
Noticing her attention, Nurse White smiled. Her teeth were immaculate, rounded and
sturdy, a herbivore's teeth. She wondered about the name, White. Was it a leftover
surname she had been allowed to keep?
"No." Nurse White responded aloud, sending bongs of alarm through Asami's
core. "My name has always been White. White Nine."
"Did you?" Asami clutched her head.
"No," The young woman smiled that herbivore smile again. "You are thinking
out loud. The sedative has that effect." Her face turned serious again. "I am
recommending you terminate your care-giver. The two of you seem to have an unhealthy
connection with one another. You know she had a fit when they took you?"
"They what?" Asami half stood. "Heidi promised me Cloey would be safe if
I...got the..." Asami trailed off under White Nine's shocked expression.
"She has already been returned to your room. She had to be inspected for
glitches. You must remember, Asami, she is only an android, she can't feel, not the way
27
humans do. Believe me, she can be reprogrammed and will be happy serving the crew in
far more needed capacities."
Asami imagined Nurse White's body withering into a dying sour patch of grass—
a stink weed. She doubted Heidi had checked Cloey for glitches; she must have been
tracking Asami through Cloey. Asami hunched in on herself, as if stiffening the muscles
along her arms and back could provide some sort of shield. Heat infused her neck and
face, her pulse snapping in her throat. Her jaw and neck tensed as she glared into the null
space before her. Heidi had promised to leave Cloey alone if Asami got the chip, if
Asami shared her memories. Asami's word had never been enough. Now, even her
memories didn't seem to be, if they were going after Cloey as well. She ground her hand
over her mouth, her teeth aching at the pressure, as her lips threatened to spit all her
fluctuating emotions out at Nurse White's feet. Why did Heidi need a chip to get inside
Asami's mind? She could have just drugged her with this cursed sedative and had every
secret regurgitated at her feet.
Would she begin to notice the chip’s effect soon? Would it feel robotic? Would
it link into her nervous system first, her sight and hearing? -No, Heidi would send it after
her memories first. There was no such thing as privacy for the chipped. Separatism was
almost a dirty word to some. It meant you had things to hide. Asami wondered bitterly if
she would feel it, memories being accessed, if she would know what left her mind, or if it
could be accessed without her.
28
Nurse White cleared her throat, her white lips thinning downward, her chin lifted,
her brown eyes surprisingly harsh, as though Asami were an errant child. Well, let her
think I’m rude, Asami thought, she didn’t know the girl well enough to care. She crossed
her arms and looked expectantly at Nurse White.
White Nine recited her next words like a stiff speech. "Congratulations, Asami
Five. Your surgery has been a success; the scan of your brain looks healthy. You can
freshen up in our waiting room. It will take some time to program your chip, and then we
can begin." Nurse White’s voice was high and thin as a whistle of grass, but suddenly
her tone sounded pleasantly lilted to Asami. Her words became even more agreeable as
they thawed into Asami's thoughts. The chip hadn't been programmed yet. It was just a
floater in her brain. Nurse White, no, White Nine, was not so unpleasant. In Asami's
estimation, White Nine swiftly regressed from being a stringy clump of sour grass and
transformed into an ivy vine climbing tall. Asami was not one of Heidi's spy eyes yet,
not someone who could be accessed with a thought.
Asami slid from the table still covering her lips, but with a lighter hand. She’d
leave, as fast as she could and as far. There was still time to get the chip out. It wasn’t
programmed; it was just a piece of metal floating around her brain.
"I didn't expect to be doing many chip operations out here. But Heidi says you
are to be well taken care of." White Nine considered Asami over her holographic scans,
which displayed Asami's skull from all angles. Asami wished she could see those scans,
29
to know where the chip was so she could dig it out. If Heidi wasn’t going to keep her end
of the deal, keeping Cloey safe, Asami wouldn’t play by the rules either.
“You must be very important,” White Nine ventured.
“If you are referring to Heidi, she’s only interested in my memories.” Asami
smiled at the young woman who looked slightly frightened of her, and walked from the
medical room towards the waiting space. It was a paisley room, with flowered couches
and wallpaper, a shock in comparison to the sea-green and silver operating room. A
Freezy sat on a love seat, his long legs splayed out, his speckled orange arms clashing
with the brown patterned seat. He seemed to have done something dreadful to one eye,
which was splotchy and pink. Her feet moved for her, walked her right out of the
hospital center. She had to clench her hands and stiffen her legs to keep from running.
She didn’t have much of a plan in mind, simply that she needed to grab Cloey and get
away from the Compound. She estimated she might have half an hour, an hour at most.
Each step rang through her, one more step away from the medical bed.
30
Chapter Three
Escape ensued, the aerial escadrille escalated while the escapees escaladed so the
escapade ended. Humans have too many words.
-Kanad, Recorded by Cloey
Asami pushed her way through the crowded commons dome. The vaulted glass
ceiling above allowed in light from the red sun that refracting ruby tones over her hands.
The clutter of voices around her piled up in her mind to a low roar. Sharp scents of
peppermint and sage assaulted her from the decorative shrubberies lining the walls as the
dense crowd wove through one another on their way towards the bars and credit stands,
yelling in one another’s ears.
A large hologram of Heidi stood in the center of the domed room mostly ignored.
Her translucent figure was raised on the center dais speaking to the crowd. The
hologram was larger than life. Heidi’s gray uniform was immaculately smooth, and a
golden badge with the letters G.P. flashed on her chest pocket. Her crackling reddish
orange hair was speckled with new gray wisps. Her wrinkled mouth smiling confidently
down at them, her blue eyes, which had always brimmed with a conspirator’s humor at
Asami, now looked sad. There was something regal in her bearing, like a matriarch.
Perhaps it was the way she smiled, her mouth firm, but her eyes understanding.
31
“Though I cannot be with you now, know that I and the other G.P. authorities are
working to bring about a resolution between our community and the original Libra
Landing Party. We will make contact, and with the testimonies of your own brothers
and sisters, we will find justice for Maxi Four.”
It seemed Heidi was still blaming the missing Libras for Maxi’s death. Asami
continued to push forward through the crowd, lost in thought. She would never forgive
Heidi for experimenting with treatments on the Bad Freeze patients. She could still see
Sam’s waxy green complexion after the first treatment, the froth on his once beautiful red
mouth, the fever in his eyes as he grasped her tunic. She could not forgive Heidi for
letting Sam die. Yet, Asami knew Heidi cared about her in some motherly way. They
were all her children, Freezy’s and Ghosts, designed by her hands in a genetic lab, raised
under her laws. There was something of love in the way Heidi had helped to shape the
way Asami’s brain worked, had twisted her genetics to make the perfect botanist. It was
her way of bringing order, of meeting the needs of their colony, and of assuring that
Asami, and all her siblings, would be happy in their work. But Asami wasn’t at all
certain that she, or Maxi, or even Alec who was bom in the Ghost batches, had turned out
the way Heidi had meant them to. Or maybe, Asami wondered, maybe it was just that
they had been exposed to her too often. Maxi had been stuck in Waheed’s freeze sleep
with her, and then Maxi had been killed to remind Asami that she and her people were
not welcome on Gliese. And Alec had met Asami as an impressionable child on the
32
Resolute. He had grown up while she went back into cryo sleep, but he had become her
best friend since she woke up. Was it her influence that put them all at odds with Heidi?
A hand clasped her shoulder and Asami flinched thinking a security guard had
found her, but it was only Alec. His face was tense; his cheeks thinner and more yellow
than they had been a few weeks ago, when the new planet had been all wonder and
exploration, when he had been caught up by the texture of real trees and the way snow
melted beneath his hands. In the short few weeks they had been planet-side his eyebrows
had begun hunching together, as if each black line were coiling, ready to spring at the
other. He was spoiling for a fight with the Elders, ready to tell them off for landing them
on a planet without checking it for dangers first. Asami was glad to see that his brown
eyes still had their usual luster, a heady, self confident light that glinted dangerously
when he smiled at her.
“You look crazy, like Holo-Book character crazy. Why are you walking round
here like a medical emergency?—and with the high-ups talking about the Libra crew
attacking us.”
“They didn’t—” Asami blurted.
Around them, people fell silent, ignoring Heidi’s repetitive display, and listening
to what Asami had to say. Asami looked down at her hospital garb, a long pale cotton
tunic. She was a white splash in a pool of navy. Other voices trailed off; the lack of
uniform seemed to invite attention. People she had never spoken with asked her for
news, who killed Maxi, were the Libras really back?
33
If Asami’s chip were active, she could show them. She could open her memories
up and they could see it all. The way Maxi had died—the images and the sounds. They
could all experience the hollow whistle of the wind over the still surface of the water,
spraying splashes of red foam, the silencing of that scream beneath the heavy water that
rippled outwards, Maxi being towed through rippling waves towards the desert sun, and
finally, the scrape of flesh on sand as Maxi disappeared in a blur of pounding dust.
For that moment, Asami ached with the desire to share her mind. To share how
lost she was. She didn’t know how to save them from the Susurri. But with the chip, she
could show everyone what they faced, invisible creatures, stronger than ten men, fast as
their vehicles. It was only her selfish desire to remain chip-less, to remain completely
herself, unlinked, that separated her from the others.
That was a lie too. Even without the chip, she could climb up on the stairs and
they would all listen. They were thirsty for news. They trusted Alec. They were
conditioned to believe one another. The chip linked the majority together, and lying was
something they had never learned to do. But if she began to lead them, to tell them what
was coming, she would never be able to escape. Heidi would find her, maybe before she
even finished speaking. The nurses would catch her, activate her chip, and Cloey would
never escape the compound because she would never leave Asami behind. And if Cloey
didn’t leave.. .it was only a matter of time before Heidi took Cloey away from her, or
before the Susurri attacked.
34
Asami fled to the elevator, shaking off hands and questions. Alec followed close
on her heels waving and smiling at the crowd as if to say, just passing through, excuse us.
“Sami, what are you doing?” Alec asked once they reached the less crowded
hallway. The familiar, soft way he spoke her name brought her up short. At first the
nickname had upset her; it reminded her so much of Sam and his death, but Alec had a
way of making old things new. She wasted another moment looking him. His pale face
had gained a freckle beneath his left eye.
“Should you be out of the hospital?” He asked.
)
“They are coming, the creatures that killed Maxi. She was just the first. You
need to get everyone out.”
“What do you mean me? You mean we, right?”
“Heidi isn’t going to leave. And I’m going to be selfish this time. I didn’t save
Sam, and I didn’t save Maxi, but I am going to save Cloey.” Asami felt encouraged by
her own words, as if the weight of responsibility could evaporate. It was almost as
though she believed she could escape Heidi, and Waheed.
“Where would you go? We need you, the Ghosts, the Freezys, we all want out
from under the Elder’s plans. What about our new world?”
“That’s never been my plan Alec. That was always your plan. And you’ll make
it happen.”
“But we need you.”
35
“Cloey needs me Alec. She has to leave, before Waheed starts smashing all our
electronic equipment or before we start breaking androids down for spare parts. The
replicators won’t be enough, and if Heidi doesn’t strip Cloey down for pieces, she will
reprogram her for some suicidal mission.”
“Don’t worry about Cloey. We can take this base Asami.”
“I know you will. But you won’t be fast enough.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. She couldn’t let him talk her into staying. She was
going to leave.
Asami feared that if she looked too closely at her plan, it would begin
disintegrating around her. Get out of the compound, and find the Libra colony. They had
learned to survive somehow. Dead people didn’t crash solar space ships in the desert.
Maybe they had defenses against Waheed’s people.
"I don’t see why you want to drag me across the dessert. Do I look like I was
made for sand?" Cloey gestured down her petit three foot frame; her joints showed gaps
where her iron core glinted through her synthetic flesh. Her piles of long blond hair were
beginning to peel behind her left ear.
“Just pack.”
Cloey scurried around the room to collect her few possessions.
36
Asami assessed what she might need to survive: her suit, food and water, a solar
charger for Cloey; she hoped it would be enough. She wanted to dress and go but Cloey
needed time. She couldn’t imagine Cloey enjoying a sea of sand and rock, with her
synthetic skin already brittle she would need some sort of moisturizer.
"I wasn’t made for a safari. Why don't we run away where there are internal
cooling systems, and charging stations, and nice stable marble floors?"
"This isn’t a vacation."
"Exactly, let’s go there."
"Cloey, we are not taking everything, just your power charger."
"You need to plan this out better.” Cloey huffed, hefting her portable generator,
which looked heavier than she was.
“What if the generator runs out?”
“It’s a freaking desert with no nighttime Asami,” Cloey drawled as she inspected
her portable generator. “I’ll use the solar panels and save the rest for an emergency.”
Iki threaded between Asami’s ankles tripping her. She had forgotten him in her
plans, and a rush of affection brimmed in her throat. She reached down, ruffling the fur
behind his ears, feeling his purrs vibrate up into her knees. The cat looked up at her, his
gaze eerily knowing, his tail keeping track of her. She suspected he would follow her
even if she tried to leave him behind, the way he had come running to her defense when
Maxi was attacked. She had fallen into a patch of minty brush as a Susurri approached
her, and Iki had stood between her and the shadow of the Susurri as if he could scare it
37
away. Heidi still didn’t know she had found the semi-telepathic cat, if she could call him
that, but he would become a lab specimen too if Heidi got a hold of her memories. She
noticed his feet kept shaking like a hanky which left little dust piles of sand around her
room. Even though the hospital had scrubbed the skin around her head red, Iki’s
presence left her feeling as if sand were stuck in her hair.
Asami’s water suit lay in a grungy heap by the shower door from before the
surgery. She hadn’t even had time to shower. Security guards had escorted her to and
from her room directly to the hospital chip in hand.
Asami took the time to rinse her feet and dress in uniform, letting cat hair collect
below her knees. She tripped over Iki several more times as she crammed her backpack
with necessities.
Cloey sat by the bag removing items as Asami shoved them in. The android’s
insistence on organization made Asami want to rip at something, and one tug at the base
of her scalp did pull out a small chunk of hair, which she quickly dropped before Cloey
noticed and wasted more time lecturing her on hair care.
“Cloey, Cloey look at me. The clothes just have to fit. No one will care if they
get wrinkled. In fact I don’t even want them, I just need my suit.”
“Riiiiight,” Cloey scoffed, continuing to fold.
Asami was certain Nurse White had already noticed her absence from the
hospitals waiting room. Heidi would be contacting her tablet any moment. Then she
would be questioned, possibly punished, and the only thing left to use against Asami was
38
Cloey. The fear of losing Cloey sent chills through Asami's chest and shoulders, quick
stinging shivers. Cloey was her first friend, the one she could eat her lunch with when
she felt too shy to join the other growth kids, the one who warned her not to turn her
bedroom floor into a garden and helped her scrub it clean when Ms. Clamps found out. It
was Cloey who first teased Asami about her crush on Sam, Cloey who had taught her
about social groupings, who had been there for her when Sam died. And there were so
many ways Heidi could use Cloey to hurt her. Reprogram her; erase Asami from her
mind—all their experiences together, even the simple threat of separating them and
Asami knew she would fold.
Asami took several calming breaths. The G.P. had designed her to be logical, so
she would take a logical course of action. Panic would make her sloppy. She needed to
do things quick, but not hap hazardously. Her roommate, Erika, kept a surgical knife in
her bed stand, slightly stained and rusty. It was probably a spare. Asmai doubted a five
inch knife could save her anymore than a sword would, but she pocketed it.
“You need a wardrobe upgrade.” Cloey sighed smoothing out Asami’s bodysuit.
It was her training gear. A bright orange G.P. was labeled to the chest. The rest of the
suit was a metallic orange brown. It was durable, capable of regulating her body
temperature in great heat or frigid cold as well as absorbing her sweat and filtering it into
drinking water. Cloey eyed it like a vial dishrag even as she handled it with care.
Asami threw her hygiene kit in the bag and Cloey fished it out again to repack.
39
“Maybe you’d make more money if you thought about your appearance a little
more. You have the aesthetics of a mole. The only word for this suit is garish.”
“We don’t have time for this.”
“Some people press their pants.”
Cloey always became fastidious when she worried, and a hike into the hot and
barren wild was not on the android’s list of priorities. Iki jumped on Cloey’s folded pile
and settled down, tail patting the bed. Cloey eyed him, her eyes narrowing, but she ran a
finger between his ears.
“I don’t need the dress uniform.”
“It never hurts to be prepared. Making an impression can save your life as much
as a weapon.”
Asami crouched and grabbed Cloey’s head bringing them eye to eye. “I am in
trouble right now. If we get caught leaving here they are going to hurt me and they are
going to disassemble you. I need you to stop caring about beauty or order or niceness. I
need you on my side. Ok?” Asami threw the blue hair she had gotten for Cloey what
seemed like ages ago in the travel bag. It was still sealed in black plastic wrap, but if
they needed a disguise it would serve.
Cloey caught at the wrapper, her face concentrating as if playing through Asami’s
words, but somehow her body language seemed to become less stubborn.
“So no folding.”
“No.”
40
“There’s room when I pack it.” Cloey couldn’t seem to help adding.
“On my side Cloey.”
Cloey looked in pain but kept silent as she let Asami zip up a jumbled, half empty
bag.
“Hydrate your skin. I’ll get water and food.” Asami straightened her uniform and
tied her hair back. “We’ll see about the rest.”
Maxi had never been popular with the Ghosts. Yet, at the bar they found reasons
to drink to her brutal death, Freezy’s and Ghosts alike. Sloshing golden glasses rose and
fell in the air. Asami looked away, her pulse quickening. She did not deserve to raise a
glass in Maxi’s memory. Even if it wasn’t her fault—the way Maxi always seemed to be
the one most damaged in their encounters with the Susurri—a part of Asami felt that if
she had been quicker, if she had given Waheed what he wanted, had succeeded in
convincing Heidi to turn back to Earth, Maxi would still be alive.
From her vantage at the counter Asami whispered Maxi’s name along with the
golden drinks that rose and fell once more.
“We don’t sell Maxi rations.” The android behind the counter shoved a dusty
sample box towards her with mechanical deliberateness. “If you want a drink, try the bar.
They named a new cocktail after that murdered girl.”
41
Flustered, Asami buried her attention into the dusty box and mumbled an order
for a month’s worth of water packets and food rations.
“Also, several packs of chocolate covered...berries,” She found herself
scrutinized silently by the android taking her order.
“It’s included on my rations card.” Asami lifted her chin staring him down. A
nervous beading of sweat formed on her forehead. His robotic eyes could probably
detect her raising temperature and nervous perspiration. She tried to slow her breaths.
Would he report her, she wondered, searching his features.
His basic face model allowed him only a raised eyebrow.
On the way back to the room she saw Cloey crouched in a neighboring door
alcove. Her skin was covered in a greasy layer of hydrating cream, a lacy blue parasol
over her shoulder. In her arms she held her generator with Ike perched on top.
“Erika arrived while you were out to ask what you were doing. I thought I better
leave before she got back to the room. You know, in case the guards showed up again.”
Asami gripped her bag of supplies more tightly. She didn’t have time to say
goodbye. She wasn’t even sure which side Erika would take. Not if she had left her
work shift early, somehow alerted to the idea Asami was up to something. She felt a
twinge of guilt as she motioned Cloey to sneak down the hall with her.
Once they reached the stairs Cloey cleared her throat. “Can we take one of those
pretty landbugs?”
42
Asami glanced down at the android, Cloey knew just as well as Asami that the
landbugs were anything but pretty. They were dusty, rough to ride in, and hardly sleek.
Their exterior was open to the air with a metal frame and thick large wheels to tread rock
and sand. “You fancy one of the drivers?”
Cloey sniffed lifting her chin. She seemed to like the way her wrapped up hair
showed off her thin neck, but at least she was keeping pace with Asami.
“I don’t expect to get far in one of the landbugs. I think Commander Declan
counts them to help lull himself to sleep.”
“You can’t seriously be thinking of walking?” Cloey stopped.
“With a hopper we might make it to the Libra’s crash site in twenty-four hours.”
If she was going to find the Libra colony, their crashed solar ships seemed a good place
to start.
Cloey resumed her stride, “As long as we don’t walk. When they catch you they
will put you on cleaning duty with the androids but I am just property, they don’t punish
androids.”
Worse, Asami thought, they reprogrammed androids.
“Hoppers aren’t that easy to walk away with.” Cloey added slyly.
“No harder than a landbug.”
Taking anything as big as a landbug much less a hopper would be something
worth pursuing her for. Unless she just got a ride out into the desert.
43
Asami wished she had sent Cloey ahead of her to the launch pad. Walking
through the habitat ring with a greasy parasol holding Cloey was not inconspicuous. She
could have sent Cloey down alone in the pretense of running an errand to collect some of
Asami’s belongings. An android on an errand wasn’t suspicious. But Cloey liked to be
seen with Asami. This instance was no exception. Cloey smiled at the other androids
and waved at a few humans, Iki’s tail whipping furiously side to side as he was jostled on
her generator box. Fortunately, she was too short for many to notice.
Asami followed after Cloey making excuses to the android standing by his booth
near the habitat door that she needed to collect samples and Cloey was going to run
errands for her. She was surprised when no one questioned where they were going but
herself. Her heart lifted slightly, this might work.
44
Chapter Four
Mindy Pink falls between Amaranth Pink and the Lavender pink. It is nowhere near the
drab of Puce or the glare of Folly Red. Mindy Pink is perfection on a tea cookie or the
inside eyelid of any Beta 2G Model android. It is also the favored shade of Bubblegum.
-Cloey
There was only two hoppers grounded but their rectangular dusty shapes looked
wonderful to Asami in the pale red sunlight. She had never been on the landing pad, a
metallic, circular balcony off the main tower looking down on the forest. There were no
railings, just a thick metal curb around the edge of the platform. Asami knew three
Hoppers were up on the Resolute since Declan had put a stop to colonization with Maxi’s
death, but she was glad the remaining two were grounded.
Pilots, Alec had told her, were never easy to deal with. The young ones had egos
and the old ones liked the rule book more than they liked their coffee break. Asami
didn’t really have a variety to choose from. She had never noticed the pilots before, but
then, she had only gotten into a Hopper once.
A middle aged man sat on an overturned storage crate. He looked as though he
could be fifty, but his hair was still dark black and his dark skin had thin creases by the
mouth. His flight suit was faded and dusty, as if he liked the weathered look that said he
45
had worn it for years. It must have been intentional since all uniforms were replaced
yearly.
Asami lifted her chin, straightened her spine and took several deep breaths trying
to gauge the best way to approach the man before she strode out as if sent there on
assignment. Instead thoughts of capture ran through her mind, Heidi emerging from a
shuttle and taking her into custody for running. She could not lose this opportunity.
Asami could feel time moving past her with each heartbeat.
“I need a ride.” Asami walked round the doorway and hoped her voice sounded
self assured.
The man lowered a dingy looking cup from his lips and leaned back to look at
her. He was short, squat, grisly and old. Not a new trainee. This was a pilot who had
flown on Earth. “You won’t be the first or last to hear this so pass it on, I can’t take you
back to the Resolute. Those of you planet-side are here to get things running efficiently.
Why do you all want to get back on the boat for anyways? A few scary monster stories
and an accident spook you and you turn tail. Think you couldn’t stand a little excitement
after all that rest.”
Asami tried to think of a way to stop the flow pouring out of his mouth before he
completely dismissed her.
“I’ve heard it all sweetheart. I even turned down a few choice bribes I could have
lived well with. No one goes back up.”
“I don’t want back up.”
46
He studied her more closely, his brown eyes peeling over her as if he could fold
away the layers of her expression and get inside her thoughts.
“I’m a botanist. I need to take some scans and samples. See how far out our
predecessors made it. Libra was supposed to have colonized more than this dot.”
“I didn’t hear about this.”
Asami had no way of knowing what he was checking through his chip or who he
might be contacting to check her story.
“Far as I know we are in lockdown.” He crossed and uncrossed his arms with a
low harrumph.
Asami walked up to the hopper as if to inspect it. He seemed to respect an
adventurous spirit. “I never said it was an order. What’s the difference between the
Resolute and the Colony if we can’t explore a little? I came here to put some green on
this rock, a few scary stories and I have to stay on the habitat deck? No thank you.”
“What’s the android for?” He scrutinized Cloey’s unprofessional attire.
“I don’t like taking notes.” Asami hoped Cloey wouldn’t take that comment
personally.
“I am a great scribe.” Cloey said with robotic effort. She must have been
mimicking a worker drone, though she didn't look the part with her nose covered in
grease.
“And the cat?” He arched a scraggly eyebrow.
Iki sniffed at the air tingling with beer fizz.
47
Asami shrugged, “My roommate’s a zoologist, asked me to watch him for the
day. I can’t just lock him in my room.”
“Research huh.” His lip twitched. “You’re not another of those Adonis probe
enthusiasts? Here to get a view of the carcasses?”
Asami shrugged with a knowing smile, as if to say, do you really care, as her
heart galloped up her throat. She didn’t know what bribes ran. How much was it worth
to her to avoid getting the chip programmed? More than she had. But did it look bad if
she tried to bribe him too high?
“I’ll give you 500 credits,” Roughly one months wage, tempting she hoped but
not startling.
“I’ve gotten better offers from brats no higher than your knee.” The pilot tapped
his chest with his free fist and released a burp.
“It’s not a bribe. It’s compensation for your time and fuel.”
“Sounds low.”
“Then barter up.” Cloey snapped, and then looked discreetly away.
The man looked between them as if debating, “ 1000 credits.”
“That sounds like a bribe,” Asami managed to say, though her leg was beginning
to tremble. Was he just playing with them? Stalling?
“Sightseeing lose its magic touch for you?” He sloshed a fuzzy beer and the
smell made Asami’s nose tingle. She realized he wasn’t just on break, he was off duty.
48
She could probably rent a ground bug on Earth for that price. She was sounding too
desperate.
“Forget it,” Asami looked at the hoppers trying to sound uninterested. “An aerial
view would have been ideal but 500 should tempt a bug driver.”
“You have 500?” He eyed Cloey doubtfully, no doubt gauging how poor Asami
had to be to keep an android so disheveled. Maybe Cloey had a point about aesthetics.
“This boat seems trashy.” Cloey set down her generator, Iki leaping off it and
sniffling round the platform.
“Hey, hey, don’t go letting that creature loose up here.” The pilot said gruffly.
Asami lifted Iki into her arms, drawing comfort from the purrs rattling deep in his
chest.
Cloey twirled her parasol, still maintaining her eerily monotone voice. “You
could find a more professional pilot.” Cloey eyed the man’s faded pants and boots.
“Someone less interested in pocket change to nurse his drink.” Her last comment slipped
into a sarcastic tone which made the pilot scrutinize her face which remained bland.
Asami tried to maintain a steady gaze, wondering if the insult would rouse the
pilot, or only anger him.
“How far out do you want to go?” He set the drink down.
"As near to the Adonis probe as you can get." Asami said too quickly.
49
“Or as far as you have the guts to take us.” Cloey muttered and marched back to
her generator. Asami coughed in her throat to cover the Cloey’s barb and smiled sweetly
at the pilot.
The hopper was basically a metal cargo hold with bucket seats drilled into the
floor and tiny windows at the rear and sides. Asami felt sweat trickle down her spine as
the minutes passed, the compound growing smaller through the dusty rear window in the
Hopper. When the tower blurred into golden fog and there was no trace of glinting metal
crafts in pursuit, she made her way up to the pilot’s cabin, empty seats rattling at her from
both sides of the aisle. Iki had settled down in a bucket seat, his claws digging into the
threaded gray fabric, ears flattened to the sides of his head. Cloey sat up front with the
pilot, chattering, any pretense of being a robotic worker drone forgotten, her every
remark answered with a grunt of annoyance: Sooo, Pilot huh? Did you get to fly the
Resolute mothership? Oh, pity...You sure do shake this ship lots. I can feel my
processor rattling. Are your skills rusty? No one would blame you, its been like years
for you right, with only holo drills to keep up on your maneuvers. You can’t always
blame turbulence.
Asami took a seat behind Cloey, her body tensed like a tightening string, Cloey
was going to get them kicked off early. Peering out the front windshield she scanned the
red washed desert below wondering when Heidi would realize what had happened.
When would she contact the pilot? She listened to his begrudging responses and watched
50
him for any sign of change, a tensing of facial muscles, and twitch, a fogged over
expression that might hint that he was being contacted via chip. But with Cloey’s chatter
she could discern nothing but an increasing degree of annoyance, his lips pressing thinner
and harder, sending suggestive glares of annoyance their way.
“Do you ever clean in here?” Cloey ran a finger over a vent, coating her finger
pads in white dust.
Asami kneed Cloey’s seat back.
“Ouch, you can’t tell me you ran over an air bump. They don’t make those.”
Cloey leaned forward rubbing her back.
Asami gave up, leaning back in her chair. Perhaps Cloey’s verbal assault would
distract the pilot from any news flashes. The hopper was sweeping high over the desert,
the landscape a mirage of gold and shadows. The sun as ripe and colorful as the insides
of a purple beat cut down the center, shimmering and full of swirling movement. Soon
Asami was lulled by the rocking of the hopper, the heat of the sun soaking through her
clothes into her skin loosened the tension in her neck and back. The glare of the red sun
winked and flashed in the glass making Asami’s eyelids heavy.
The pilot craned forward in his seat.
“Back ache?” Cloey asked sympathetically, as if she too had experienced muscle
pain.
The ship began to lower steadily towards the sand. Asami glimpsed the Libra
crash site in the aerial scan, gleams of metal in the mirage of sand and sun.
51
“Why are we slowing down? There are still several miles to the crash site.”
Asami asked.
“This is as far as 500 gets you. 10000 and I'll drop you off personally, but Declan
checks the flight records, and this is as far as I go.” He circled round a cave ridge.
Asami doubted that was the only reason. He looked eager to be rid of them, or maybe
just Cloey.
If she had that much she might have paid him. Her life savings would probably
be confiscated by Declan in a few hours anyways. Cloey watched the pilot circle away
into the sky with a mournful wave.
****
A ridge of caves stood up from the sand dunes behind Asami, tall tan openings
that narrowed into blackness. The caverns were squatty on top, as if the heat of the sun
had worked on them like gravity, flattening their tall edges into flat heads lined up in a
row. If there had ever been edges to the boulders they had melted in slow motion over
years forming a rolling mass of smooth rock and melted sand instead of the sharp and
brittle crevices Asami had seen closer to the compound.
Before her was a haze of golden, sloping dunes, and a few miles towards the sun
was the crash site of the Libras.
52
Cloey sat with her back against a boulder beside the caverns, her power supply on
her lap, parasol on its side to protect her legs. Asami crouched in the shade of the cave
without actually sitting under it. She suppressed a stutter of panic as she watched a
swirling dust devil shave off a dune head. If they veered too far right or left trudging
through the sand they could walk right past the crash site and never know it. Lost in the
desert, they would be easy pickings for a stray Susurro, or maybe heat and starvation
would run its course.
Iki fished in a hole, the smell of rodents drifted through Asami's mind as she
watched him. The chilled ground in the shadow of the rock was less dry, pits of moisture
hidden in crevices of the boulder from a recent rainfall. Asami felt her lips begin to crack
and let a small gulp of water sit on her swollen dry tongue. It evaporated and did little to
sooth her rough throat.
Cloey looked out of place, her fanciful parasol clashed with her exposed shoulder
wires.
“I'm sorry you had to leave,” Asami reached forward to dust sand off Cloey’s
exposed ankle.
“There isn’t much back there for me without you.” Cloey looked up at the sky.
“No one else has kept their kid android, at least not intact. Without you I’d be spare
parts.” Cloey peeled back the synthetics of her ankle and shook her foot to dislodge sand
before smoothing the skin back in place. The unemotional tone was so unlike Cloey that
Asami regarded her for a moment. She had expected more complaining, but Cloey did
53
have a practical steak. She wasn’t going to take credit for loyalty; she made it sound
more like survival. Asami promised herself she would look out for Cloey, if she could
even look after herself.
“When we get back I have first dibs on the tub, and I’m using all your body soap.
No sterile shower, I’m going for the long soak.” Cloey’s tone had lifted as it always did
when she dreamed about luxury or consumerism.
Asami wondered what future Cloey envisioned for herself. She could see them
ending in this barren landscape, buried in the sand when they failed to track down the
Libra colony, Cloey’s skeleton remaining long after Asami’s had been blown away by
age and wind. But Cloey never talked about practical futures. Her plans always included
great fame or great fortune.
Asami changed into her training suit as she felt herself begin to perspire. She was
thankful for its light weight and mobility. The fabric also blended into the tan sand
making her feel less conspicuous. She wished she had been as thoughtful of Cloey and
gotten a sand resistant suit for her.
She turned her attention to the tablet and the image of the campsite that had
leaked into the chip's feed the first night planet-side. A quick aerial view and the position
of the sun served as clues to the direction Asami should take.
Behind her the caves whistled mournfully. Iki had wandered inside one of the
larger caverns. Turning to peer after him, she saw that the cavern was tall mouthed,
smooth as candle wax, but quickly narrowed into tunnels. To Asami’s eyes they were
54
pits of blackness, but Iki could see each crack and indentation in the rock giving her a
strange double vision. He scampered about inside smelling the moist sand and Asami let
her bond with him strengthen, letting his senses overwhelm her own just to escape her
problems for a moment. It was a strange transition, the world coming into focus through
smell, her sight fading, alert more to movement than colors or shapes. She felt Iki bristle
as a flat and base scent wafted from one of the dark tunnels. Asami thought she tasted
metal. A hand came into view and a face limp and swollen.
Asami tried to distance herself from the sight as Iki, unperturbed by the body,
sniffed around it. She retreated from Iki's mind and found herself standing in the sun
rubbing her mouth and nose. The last thing she wanted to do was crawl down a hole after
a body, but it had to be a Libra Colonist, which meant a clue, at least how he or she had
died, one she might not find at the actual crash site. She had no idea what state of decay
it was in and Iki didn’t perceive things the same way humans would. Death smelt like his
mother.
“I’ll just be in the cave for a second.” Asami didn’t think Cloey would like the
idea of sun bathing beside a corpse.
Cloey stood up quickly reorienting her back to the sunlit sand. “Lovely spot you
picked here. Sand, an obscured view of bodies on the horizon, more sand.”
“I’m not making you go in. Give me the tablet.”
55
Cloey unhooked the tablet from her abdomen. Turning the brightness up, Asami
used it like a lamp to peer into the cave.
She tried not to hold her breath since Iki was sending her acute smells of decay
anyways. Inching down the mouth of the cave Asami shone the limited screen up on the
walls and ceiling to look for anything that might fall on her. A few stagnant drips of
water greeted her by splashing down on her hair and nose, curling around her nostril and
pooling on her upper lip. The tunnel bottlenecked ahead.
“Hold this for me, and try to shine it inside.” Asami positioned Cloey by the
mouth of the cave.
The harsh light of the sun faded quickly as Asami moved forward. The tablet
light only reached a few handbreadths more, refracting and glimmering on the wet walls
in iridescent smears. Asami had to crawl forward on her knees, hoping she didn’t touch
anything that could bite. The tunnel narrowed further still until she had to wedge herself
forward against wet rock. She forced herself to keep crawling even as the blackness
enveloped her completely, her eyes searching for an outline in the black, but only red and
blue splotches manifested in the dark.
“You ok in there?” Cloey’s curious voice echoed hollowly.
“Yup,” Her voice sounded loud in her ears.
“This is horrid.” Cloey had stuck her head under the rock roof. “Please tell me
we are not sleeping here.”
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“We are not sleeping here.” Asami didn’t look back; afraid the bright white
mouth of the cave would make it harder for her eyes to adjust.
She crawled, one fingers width at a time, unsure if the heavy panting in her ears
was from her own breath or that of Iki, or worse, the body. She wasn’t sure which was
worse, the thought that she was crawling towards a dead body or an alive one. As terrible
as it sounded in her head, she hoped they were fully dead. She hoped that the soft exhale
was merely decomposing gasses. That she wasn’t crawling towards someone who could
fight back.
The body was not far away. Cloey had followed her in a few steps before the
cave narrowed, shining light over her shoulder. Iki’s glittering eyes reflected the screen
light back, and Asami’s heart shudder in her chest. She didn’t really need to see the body
did she? She had come out here to look at them but that was in the sun, with plenty of
space, not stuffed into a cave.
The tablet’s light cast a sickly orange glow across a hand. Deep shadows gave the
fingers a skeletal appearance. Asami tried not to think about how tight the walls were, or
what else might be in the cave with the body. Images of scavengers flashed through her
mind, scorpions, snakes, nesting, pinching, biting insectile creatures that might be native
to the planet, or morphed from something the Libra colony had bred.
A sharp breath echoed off the stone heightened by Iki’s sensitive ears.
57
Asami froze, her skin prickling up the back of her neck, a hot-cold sensation
shivering down her back. Her muscles refused to inch forward, her joints locking stiff.
She opened her mouth to speak, her breath a low shaky pant.
“Hello?” Asami whispered hoarsely. Her voice echoed hollowly around her ears.
There was no response. She focused on Iki’s sense of smell, his hearing. Through the
patter of her own heart and the hiss of her breath through her nose, she heard someone
else—a steady in and out breath.
Asami struggled to keep from fleeing backwards. If she fled, she would lose what
little perception she had in the cave, and if nothing followed her out, she didn’t think she
could make herself crawl back inside. Iki hissed as something glinted in the tablet’s light
beyond the body. A flicker. Dead things did not move. Her nerve failed. She began to
back up. “Iki, come on, this way.” She tried to keep her voice steady; hoping whatever
sat beyond the dead body would stay there, knowing she was leaving.
She felt her way backwards and saw a form move in the darkness, larger than her,
brushing against the ceiling of the cave as it rose. She crawled backwards faster, her
knees scuffing as she pushed out of the tunnel. She felt Iki’s alarm as thick hands
scooped at him and smelt blood as he raked his claws down soft flesh. Asami pushed to
her feet, her head knocking against the shallow ceiling.
What sounded like a slightly off Chinese curse filled the darkness.
“Asami?” Cloey’s head blocked the light. “That sounded like a man.”
“You think?” Asami shouted.
58
“I know a man when I hear one.”
Asami stopped when she was out in the light. The Holo Lab training came back
to her like useless propaganda telling her not to engage, telling her to retreat. But if this
was a Libra colonist, she needed to talk to him, find out why they had left the colony,
why they were not contacting the Resolute crew. If he was dangerous she should run
now but Cloey would fall behind. Her rational mind told her there was nowhere to run.
Iki scampered out half bounding half walking as if unsure how to show his
displeasure and retain his dignity as he kept out of reach. The man materialized from the
gloomily lit cavern, his large frame filled the opening. Asami wondered how tightly
scrunched he had been. He looked like a human oxen, both thick and tall. His arms
heavily muscled making him look top-heavy. If he was a descendent of the first Libra
crew, the atmosphere had made him a size larger. His hair was black as tar, and long,
swinging loose from a braid. He had a reflective metal plate patched onto his forehead
that caught the red sunlight. Scars shimmered over his exposed skin, slightly raised white
lines some as thick as Asami’s fingers. His sturdy brown leather looked clumsily cut,
thick and well worn with faded patches and creases so deep some of them had to be
cracked through.
Cloey whistled. “Hello there.”
He looked at Cloey with more interest than Asami liked. It wasn’t the type of
interest one shows a girl he likes with an up and down scan. It was a sharp shrewd
59
glance, calculating. The type of look Cloey had often received from Declan, both
disapproving and brooding.
Asami knew he wasn’t a wandering crewmember from the Resolute, she would
have noticed someone as bizarre as he looked. He was savage enough in comparison to
the lean, uniform Resolute crew that Asami didn’t know how to approach him. Her
tongue tangled between an awkward greetings and a demanding question.
“You’re quiet strong aren’t you?” Cloey said instead, a silly smile on her face.
She seemed oblivious to the cunning expression of the man, or his dull black eyes.
Asami however, took in every twitch of the man’s eye as she scrambled for a plan to
approach or retreat. She could use Erika’s scalpel in defense if he turned violent, but
even if she sunk it into the man’s chest she imagined him drawing it out and slicing her
open like a fish. The brute lifted his arm, a long angry scratch ran diagonally from elbow
to wrist. He didn’t move closer, only stared between them as if absorbing Asami and
Cloey’s presence.
“That looks terrible,” Cloey tutted, “You should definitely get that looked at.”
He didn’t acknowledge that Cloey had spoken, his gaze shifting to Asami’s face.
“You are attracting them.” His voice startled her, smooth and concise, not the
rough barking she had anticipated. He sounded almost military. “Light, electronics,
blood, your fancy hover crafts.” His gesture encompassed everything. “You even smell
green.” He sneered.
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Asami pulled Cloey back towards her. Heat rose up the back of her neck. He
made it sound as though she was stupid, and yet, out here, compared to what he must
know, she was. She felt Cloey tug at her arm.
“He’s just teasing you,” Cloey whispered loudly. “It’s a tactic to impress you,
makes him look smarter.”
Asami doubted that. He despised them. Maybe he despised the whole crew.
Was that why his people were eluding them? Did they think the Resolute crew would be
a burden?
“Is that why you left the Colony? The one the first Libra crew built? Because of
the electronics? Because you found out about the Susurri?” Asami blurted. Excitement
tingled down into her stomach. The Libras knew about the Susurri. They must know
how to survive despite them. Her excitement faded a little as she took in the man’s
primitive gear. Did survival mean regression to pre-electronics? If so, the Libras would
be no use to her, and she and Cloey would just be a danger to them. The flash of metal in
the man’s head gave her pause though. It didn’t simply look like a patch, some primitive
brain injury procedure, it looked too carefully implanted.
“We wondered why the Susurri had begun to move again in such large packs. We
have had to improvise. At least your people have served as a distraction.”
“For what?”
“For the hunt.” The man bared his flat, square teeth before he turned around and
disappeared back into the cave.
61
Asami squinted into the dark after him. Did he mean they were going to go
hunting Susurri? She didn’t like the sound of that; her only use would be as bate. She
felt painfully in need of hope. This couldn’t be a dead end, the Libras had to have a safe
haven. Even the Resolute scans of the planet hadn’t picked up their colony, so they must
have an electronic dampening field, which meant they had to use electronics. If not,
Cloey was dead walking.
Dag emerged once more with the dead body—another Libra, perhaps his partner.
He slung her like a pack across his shoulder.
“Are we bringing her?” Cloey whispered to Asami.
“Come with me, unless you want us to pick up your carcasses in a few days.” He
walked towards the crash site in the distance.
“Ew, no thank you, let’s go with him Asami.” Cloey started after him.
“Did they kill her? The Susurri?” Asami found the word awkward in her mouth.
She had not spoken to anyone about Waheed’s people before, at least not so openly.
“Geir meet Asami, Asami Geir.” He took the woman’s hand and waved it. “And
I’m Dag.”
"Charmed," Cloey curtsied.
The woman must have been important to him if he was taking her with him, if he
had been guarding her carcass. But then, Asami didn’t think he had much reverence for
the body in the way he handled her, like a bag of supplies. He lacked pain when he
looked at her. The woman must have been recently dead, because though stiff she hadn’t
62
begun to smell, at least not to Asami’s nose. Iki’s senses were much sharper. Geir’s face
was rough, almost leathery and she too had a thin piece of metal but it stuck beneath her
ear as if hidden.
Something about the way Dag calculated his words, the way he watched them,
made Asami nervous. What if she was walking Cloey into more danger than simply
being wiped and reprogrammed? The problem was, she didn’t know what Dag wanted or
why he would bring them along. The thought of walking in a different direction or
staying behind didn’t seem like an option. The risk of following Dag hadn’t yet
outweighed her need to learn more about him. She had found a Libra crew-member,
someone who could give her answers, someone Heidi and Declan would give their chips
to meet.
63
Chapter Five
If faith is fair, failure is a fractionary factor.
-Kanad, Recorded by Cloey
Unshielded by clouds, the whole circle of the poppy red sun was visible. It
hovered far above the rim of land and sky and beat its warmth down, crisping their skins.
Asami couldn’t help enjoying the heat and light on the walk towards the crash site. In
comparison to the dusky chill outside the compound, the bright sunlight was
rejuvenating, soaking through her skin and loosening her muscles. The top of her head
felt like a warming rock. From a distance it had looked as though windbreaker tarps had
been erected, large strips of canvas that were actually the sturdy and stiff remains of
metal wings from a crashed solar ship. Asami had seen old models of this type of craft.
They had metal sails used to catch light waves for energy. It was an old design, not
meant for an atmosphere, where its lack of streamline design probably tore it in half on
entry.
It wasn’t until they were upon the site that Asami saw the dead draped among
the wreckage, strewn bodies of those who had been aboard the vessel. Asami felt her
stomach heave against her throat when she saw that not all the bodies were whole. Some
were half buried by sand, some in pieces, a hand or foot. The sand itself was stained
black and red. She didn’t know if the flakes of ash that landed in her hair, on her skin,
64
that she breathed in were charred sand or charred flesh. The foul smell of burnt metal
and scorched flesh hit her, sweet and sour charcoal. The scent caught at the back of her
throat and she dry heaved, her tongue curdled in her mouth, as if the smell were attaching
to her, sticking like pollen.
Dag collected the bodies from beneath the debris. The less whole ones he left in
a separate pile, his face contorting into a pained grimace. The bodies that had retained
most of their limbs were clad in scientific coats, and uniforms. Dag’s eyes were almost
moist. It seemed at least one form of death bothered him.
Asami looked the forms over, preparing herself. None of them were as large as
Dag or Geir, except perhaps the ones that were only chunks, like blackened plastic
manikin parts. If Asami tried, she could picture the pieces as non-human, pieces from an
android’s junk pile, only instead of wires there were ligaments. They didn’t look as old
and decayed as she thought a dead body would under the perpetual baking sun, but she
didn’t know how long it took a body to decompose.
“We got footage of this site, just days ago. What happened?”
“Yes, you even stole a few bodies. What do you do with them?”
Asami paled. She hadn’t known Declan had taken pieces of the dead. She should
have guessed that. Heidi wouldn’t waste a chance to sequence any DNA changes. One
could learn almost as much from a dead body as a live one. “No. I didn’t know. How
did it happen?”
65
“Pilot run on a Solar Sail, a new space ship that doesn’t need fuel, not so fast but
it gets around.”
“And the gashes?” Asami lifted a metal panel with rips in it. Beneath lay a
woman.
“It wasn’t the crash that killed them, at least not most of them.”
“The Susurri did this?” Asami’s stomach soured.
Dag’s eye flickered up at her as she gripped a woman beneath her stiff arms. The
woman’s suit was brittle and burnt, flaking onto Asami’s palms. Asami took a firm grip,
prayed she wouldn’t break a decomposing rib or pull off an arm as she dragged. The
body felt eerily solid, her dark silken hair still soft and alive in the wind. She was heavy,
and Asami felt her hands leave an imprint in the swollen flesh. She hoped that helping
Dag move the bodies might soften him up to her a bit and tried to smooth her features as
her skin crawled. Her fingers dug into ridged flesh. The woman could only have been
dead a few days, and even so she looked preserved. Her face held a loose grimace,
tanned features faintly creased.
“Have you seen one? A Susurri?” Asami tried to distract herself, focusing back
to the rippling shape she had seen by the pond, water rolling off contours in the air.
“No one sees them.” Dag gave her a strange, feral look and turned to lift another
body, but at least he didn’t snarl.
“But you must have figured out something about them. Like the mint. You
planted it everywhere, strong smells. It keeps them from seeing you or something right?”
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“I wasn’t bom at the compound. We don’t use mint.”
“You must know something about them. You must have captured some of them.”
“That’s for the lab to figure out. We know they can sense electronics; our own
energy seems to attract them. They also refuse to let go of their prey once they catch one
of us. That’s how we hunt them.”
“You use yourselves as bait?” Asami felt horror like a cold trickle of ice water
through her flesh. She was beginning to understand why the woman Iki had found in the
cave was dead and Dag wasn’t.
Asami pulled the woman she held on top of another, smaller female. Dag slipped
back into silence. He seemed to view talk as wasteful. She studied him indirectly, her
eye drawn to the metal that glistened across his forehead, his skin red around the rim. He
was alien, non scientific, more brute than brain. She watched him pile the remains
meticulously and wondered how soon he expected company, and what that would mean
for her.
Her scalp began to bum, her hair hot to touch. She felt queasy at the thought of
gripping another solidly dead Libra but helping seemed to loosen Dag’s tongue. She
reached for a petite woman.
“So, how have you all kept yourselves alive? We thought you were all dead, no
sensor traces of a civilization.”
Dag turned on her suddenly, his features hard. For a moment Asami thought he
would hit her but with a deliberate restraint he plucked the body from Asami’s hands.
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“Enough. Go sit down with your android and while I think about it, turn it off.”
“Asami?” Cloey’s voice rose in alarm. She sensed Iki’s eyes fixate on Dag’s
stance analyzing his posture as a threat.
Asami backed away lifting her hands half to ward off further aggression and half
to protect herself if he did strike. When he turned his back she let her arms rest and put
some distance between her and the wreckage. Iki sat beneath a large wing of metal
shielding. His body uncoiled as she drew near and his mind returned to study images in
the sand where the sun pooled. Cloey looked dismal, sitting on her power box, her skin
dry and thin.
“He is not a nice man,” Cloey said loudly. She leaned around Asami, clearly
intending her words for Dag.
“You get anything on the feed?” Asami asked and crouched in front of Cloey.
Cloey shook her head. “There isn’t even a manhunt out for us.” She looked hurt.
“Is there any way to get a message to the hopper pilot?” Asami rubbed her hands
down her arms. Dag had said things about the hunt that nagged at her. That the colony
could be a distraction for the hunt and that they used one another as bait made her wonder
what they would use the compound for. Dag hadn’t been surprised to see her, he and the
other Libras knew that her people had arrived, but they had not made contact. She
assumed the bait wasn’t expected to survive from the look of Dag’s company. Did the
Libras plan to use her colony as bait? She glanced back at Dag and found his eye on her.
He didn’t look away.
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“I think we should leave,” Asami whispered.
Cloey glared over Asami’s shoulder and the crunch of sand instinctively had
Asami on her feet.
“It’s of no use out here,” Dag said gruffly gesturing to Cloey.
“She’s of use to me.”
“You’re wasting energy that could be used elsewhere, turn it off.”
“Not your energy.” Though Asami wondered, if they were forced to go with him
would she be reliant on them for energy they couldn’t afford to waste on an android?
Asami found herself standing protectively closer to Cloey. The android’s eyes had grown
wider and a light flashed in her pupils as she accessed feed links.
“Do you listen at all?”
“Cloey doesn’t belong to you.”
“Turn her off or I’ll turn her off for you. Electronics attract them.”
Asami switched off her tablet noticing Cloey’s unusual silence. “Can you run on
low power Cloey?”
“Drop of blood in the water is still blood in the water.”
Asami stared at him. “Why now, we have been using electronics for over an hour
with you.”
“Because we’ve stopped moving. Or could you have carried her as dead
weight?”
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Asami glared at him knowing he was right and kicked herself for not thinking of
it first. If a small chip in their heads had bothered Waheed’s people, what must they
think of an android? The image in her mind resurfaced, water rolling off the contours of
air. Maxi’s crooked form dragged from the water. A new fear burgeoned in her mind.
She could lose Cloey to the Libras who might see her as a risk, or use her as bait. She
thought of all the electronics abuzz in the compound.
“Surely they would be more attracted to the compound than a dot out here.”
“They are predators, and you are the slow one.”
Asami felt Cloey’s small papery hand slip inside hers.
“Turn her off, or I will,” He stepped closer.
“Give me a minute.” Asami put all the strength she could muster in her voice and
she met his eye. Iki’s instincts not to look away kept her eyes fixed on his. He stepped
back with a mock smile.
Asami crouched down beside Cloey to say she was sorry, to say she didn’t have a
choice, that she would fix this, to ask if it was ok. Cloey had compacted her box against
her chest and hugged it with her cheek resting on her knees. She didn’t meet Asami’s
eyes and before Asami could explain, or say a word, she had already shut herself off.
Asami felt a pang in her chest that Cloey had already known she wouldn’t fight for her.
Asami wanted to press her power button and wake her up, but it wouldn’t make a
difference. What was worse, Asami felt slightly relieved. She hadn’t had to force Cloey
to shut down.
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“Cloey is not a tool.” Asami looked at Dag. “Let’s make that clear.” She felt her
hollow command bounce off him. “You have been eyeing her from the start. From the
moment you saw her.”
Dag ignored her.
Asami sat in the sand beside the android and let herself feel like a monster. She
should have ignored him. What felt worse was that Cloey had known it before Asami
had. She already knew Asami would pull the plug. Iki’s tail swatted at her face, his head
pushed up against her chin and she felt his purrs vibrate from his chest.
Her fingers itched to turn on her work pad and send out a distress call. Cloey’s
fate couldn’t be worse at the compound than what Dag might have in mind and maybe
Asami could go back with news. Maybe they would listen. But Dag’s eyes met hers
every time her fingers twitched toward it. If anything happened to Cloey it was her fault,
but no one would blame her for the loss, no would see it as a loss.
She barely noticed that Dag had stopped working. He stood still and at last Asami
followed his gaze and saw dust rise less than a mile away. A low down craft, like a tan
beetle grew as it rolled closer. Four large wheels, half the height of the vehicle treaded
sand into the air. It looked as thick as a tank, the only windows appeared at the front,
other than the sliding side panel doors the rest of the craft looked air tight. Two men
hung out the open sides, both had long hair, the blond one had his braided.
As the vehicle drew close Asami stood and felt Iki’s annoyance tingle through her
mind as he was deposited back into the sand. The vehicle parked beside the pile of
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bodies and the two men jumped down beside Dag. Asami peered past them. The vehicle
was all floor and roof. The open doors revealed a cargo interior, no seats just storage
space, about ten feet wide and twenty-four feet long. The driver’s seat was sectioned off
from the back. While the craft stood a good 10 feet tall, the wheels made up five of those
feet, and anyone within had to hunch. Inside, Asami saw a girl laid out in a comer next
to a tomb sized crate with gashes in the sides. Her hair was sandy but a recognizable
dark brown in a skull tight braid. Asami drew closer, sure now that she saw the water
suit, clay colored and shiny.
“Found this one dragging a girl off.” The blond called to Dag as he patted the
crate. “You would think they’d learn to let go of their pray when they are outnumbered.”
His leather armament had deep gashes through it almost as if daggers had sliced the
leather open.
Asami stared at the box. The Susurri that had attacked Maxi was supposedly
inside that. None of her memories of interacting with Waheed gave her courage when
she looked at the crate. A trapped Susurri was more violent than a free one. She
wondered if the metal would hold it. There was a low humming that radiated off the box
and vibrated in the air.
“Be grateful they haven’t.” Dag nodded to the wreckage.
“Now why is it we get the dead ones near the new colony, and you fish up a live
one?” The blonde smiled at Asami and she forced herself to join them, even though her
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nerves screamed at her to flee, to take Cloey and run. Both of the men were as large as
Dag, though the blonde seemed less moody.
“You won’t like her.”
“Her is listening.” Asami stepped up to the open door of the craft and climbed
inside.
“Don’t touch the crate.” Dag reached for her.
“I’m not interested in the crate,” Asami snapped and crouched by the body the
blonde had boasted over. She turned the strewn brunette over. Maxi’s face looked up at
her, sandy and stiff.
“We are moving anyways.” Dag began to pile bodies into the cargo space.
“Why are you bringing them?” Asami stepped to the side.
“Nothing wasted, nothing wanted.” The blonde looked Asami up and down.
“You mean you use the bodies? For what?”
Thoughts of cannibalism flashed
through her mind.
The blonde tapped the metal plate on Dag’s head. “Doctors figured out how to
resuscitate most of us, if there is enough left. Some of us end up more cyborg than
others.”
“That’s not possible.” Was it possible, Asami wondered, or were they creating
shells, cyborgs?
“Do I look dead to you?” Dag lifted Geir’s body in and Asami wondered again
how she had died, and Dag’s lack of concern for her.
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Asami studied the plate in his head. It was seemless with his flesh, and there were
small slices across the fine metal, like entry points.
“You know this girl?” The blonde motioned to Maxi. “You can recover her. The
doctors don’t have previous scans of her brain, or memories, but she hasn’t been dead
long either.”
Asami looked at Maxi’s gray face and thought of her eyes opening, her brain
clicking back into gear incomplete.
Dag hopped out of the cargo bay and lifted Cloey from the sand. Asami made to
follow, but the blonde blocked her.
“That’s my android,” She glared at the blonde. He smirked. A chill sliced up her
back. Were they going to lock her in here? Iki scampered into the back and circled
Asami, sensing her fear. His ears flattened as he sniffed at the air. Dag shoved Cloey’s
folded form into Asami’s arms forcing her to back up.
“Don’t mess with the crate.” Dag fixed her with a dark eye and shut the door in
her face with one powerful slam.
Asami’s breath rasped in the dark, her eyes adjusting slowly, splotches of green
and purple blooming in the dark. She pawed at her tablet to turn it on for a hint of light,
but all that appeared on the screen was a red flashing message that said Electronics
Prohibited. Somehow, Dag was using a jamming signal.
* ***
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The smell was intolerable. Iki didn’t help. He sniffed about her feet as the craft
rocked. The darkness did little to shelter the cargo area from the heat, which only
heightened the smell of death. Asami wasn’t easily frightened, but the shiver of sweat
that slipped down her spine and the quickening of her heartbeat told her what her mind
refused to admit. She was terrified. Asami gripped at Cloey’s frame and huddled by the
door where a sliver of light shone. Iki sat just out of her reach, his eyes on the metal
crate. His senses were poised on it, unblinking for the past half hour. The vibrations the
crate leaked were giving her a headache, vibrating in her nose canal.
Logically she knew dead bodies could do little to harm her, but Iki’s fixation with
the crate gave her lockjaw, and what Dag planned to do with her was beginning to circle
in her mind. Would they torture her for information? Were they cannibals? For all she
knew he was out of his mind. Reanimating the dead, dead once himself. She pushed the
image of the metal crate away.
“Dag.” Asami yelled again, louder. She heard her own voice echo but Dag
didn’t answer. The door had been securely locked as well. Asami closed her eyes again,
but open or shut, Iki’s clear view of the box haunted her vision and replaced the black.
Asami turned on her tablet again but received the same simple message.
Electronics Prohibited. With a glance at the silent crate, even though her human eye
could detect nothing but blackness, Asami reasoned it was worth the risk of antagonizing
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the Susurri with a little electronic usage. It was caught in a box. She was in more danger
from Dag and his men. Turning to Cloey, Asami pressed her power button.
The glow of Cloey’s eyes sent thin beams across the pile of bodies.
“Cloey? Please I need you.”
Cloey blinked, and the beams flashed. Then she screamed, a whirling whine.
Asami clapped her hand across the androids mouth to muffle the sound and was
blinded by the high beams shooting from Cloey’s eyes.
“Shhh, oh please Cloey cut it out.” Asami blinked spots from her vision releasing
Cloey as the noise tapered off to a thin wail.
“Why are we in a morgue Asami?”
“It’s not a morgue it’s a vehicle, can’t you feel us moving?”
Cloey gripped at her head. “There’s something in my head Asami. Its, it’s trying
to shut me off.”
“There’s an electronic jammer. I need to know where we are.”
“There’s no chip feed.” Cloey’s volume rose.
“Can you tell anything? I need-” Asami’s voice cut out as Iki picked up a noise
from the crate. Cloey’s high beams fixed on the box. The crate scrapped across the floor
as if whatever was inside it were thrashing against the side. A dent was beginning to
form. Asami sensed the creature’s anger in the air, like a wave of heat.
“Asami what have you gotten me-”
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“Look at the crate.” Asami commanded turning Cloey’s head towards the metal
box again, just in time to see a dent form.
“It’s one of them, they really do sense electronics.” Asami watched as another
lump formed like a blister in the metal.
“You attract problems.” Cloey’s beams glared at Asami. Iki’s hair stood on end.
“Do you know where we are?” Asami’s finger hovered over Cloey’s power
button.
“Asami I’m jammed.” Cloey snapped.
The crate shook again and Asami’s finger jumped against the power button.
Cloey’s eyes widened and dimmed into black.
Stillness permeated the cargo bay. Asami thought she could sense a restlessness
within the crate, as if a creature were pacing side to side. She huddled tensely against the
wall pulling Cloey towards her. She didn’t know if her eyes were shut or open, the sight
of the crate filled her every sense. Iki sat as if in a stalemate, unmoving, just watching
for the crate to twitch.
Asami closed her eyes tightly. She had spoken with Waheed, mind to mind.
Distance hadn’t mattered. Perhaps she could speak to this creature too. She pictured
herself, stepping through the metal. Hello? The mind she met snagged her out of the air
like a cat paw snatching a mouse and slammed her against the floor. Her real eyes
snapped open. Something warm dripped from her nose. She brushed at it with her
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finger. It smelt like iron. Her head ached as if it had actually been slammed into a metal
wall. She did not try to communicate again.
She didn’t know how long they sat but at last she felt the craft halt. A thin hot
breeze that had been brushing her face stilled. Asami peered through the bright crack in
the door and saw movement.
“Dag?” Asami yelled.
She hadn’t thought it possible as scared as she was and with the reek o f death
fermenting like fuzzy spores on her tongue but she was hungry.
The door creaked open and the blonde grinned at her.
“How was the ride?”
Asami hadn’t realized just how frightened she had been until the relief of light
and air fell over her. She didn’t trust her voice but shoved past the man to stand out in
the sand. She looked up but the sun had moved position.
“Hey, hey, this isn’t a stop it’s a break to eat and do your business.” He handed
her one of her own food rations.
“Thanks,” she drawled. “So kind of you to let me have one of my own food
packs.”
He laughed. “I wondered where Dag got them. Consider it the price of
transportation.”
“My memory fails me, when did it become a thing to charge people you kidnap?
I think its called theft.” She snatched the ration anyways.
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Iki swiveled between her legs. Asami glanced around again half afraid to leave
Cloey in the cargo hold alone. She was paranoid that they might drive off without her,
but then, they could have left her at any moment.
“Three minutes.” Dag appeared, unrepentant and annoyed that she had been
allowed out. “Cortie, I need you.”
The break was short lived, but enough for Asami to get her bearing based on the
sun’s lowered offset position, placing her south of the colony. She used her time as
wisely as she could and too soon Dag returned and nodded towards the craft.
“Why do I have to ride with the dead people?”
“You’re not a passenger, and you aren’t cleared for the control booth.” He made
as if to grab her and Asami backed away.
Dag’s sharp eyes fixed on the metal crate and a grim smile twisted his mouth.
“Don’t turn the android on again and it won’t break through the metal.” He gestured to
the cargo bay.
Asami resented the sight of the dark doorway.
Dag’s eyes narrowed. “Or stay behind, but I’ll be taking your android. You
would just kill yourself out here with it anyways.”
Asami gripped the door before he could shut it. Dag waited for her to climb
inside.
“No electronics Blue Eyes. We have company around here.” With that he pulled
the door shut again.
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“Not from what I’ve... seen.” Asami finished to the closed door.
The temperature plummeted soon after. Asami felt her nose and cheeks numb as
steam lifted from her hair. The metallic walls cooled so that her fingers once scalded
now threatened to stick to the floor. She felt as if ice clung to her skin. The heat that had
suffocated her earlier was replaced by a heavy chill and she began to feel like veal in a
meat fridge.
By the cracks in the door frame she could scrape off thin sheets of ice. The cold
sent her into a stiff stupor and she drifted in and out of sleep. Iki’s warm body pressed
into her chest. The suit kept her warm enough, but did nothing to protect her head and
feet which grew numb. At last she heard the vehicle slow to a crawl, the crunch of snow
alerted her.
When the door opened the blackness did not lift. A frail glow shed enough light
that Asami could make out Dag’s hulking form and the glow of his teeth as he grinned
down at her.
“Out.” He waved her forwards as she fled the smell of chilled death. She felt
certain the stench had seeped into the fabric of her suit and would cling there. She could
smell it in her hair, a musty perfume and sensed it beneath her nails where she had helped
to lift the dead body onto the pile.
They had parked between two hills in a small valley of ice. The air was thick
with water, and Asami almost thought she could brush aside ice crystals, as if snow had
been frozen mid-fall, suspended in the air.
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1
Beneath her feet the sand looked blue and above her, the outline of a moon
hovered in the sky. It looked like another planet, bone whine with electric blue rivers
running through the surface, as if it were a glaze pot with crackles on the surface. A
spray of blue was leaking out from the skin of the moon, out into space like a leaky tap.
She wondered what it would be like to ride that wave, falling through space with water.
She heard a crunch of sand and snow behind her.
“Sorry.” A voice, it sounded like Cortie, whispered as a sticky patch touched her
neck. She reached up, a protest on her mouth as she scrapped at the sticky patch, her
mind fighting against its numbing effect. But I’m not out of control, she thought.
Sleep buzzed in her ears, her sight unfocused, blurring. Her eyes shut out the
confusion as stable landscape shifted. She blinked to stave off sleep but it thickened in
her nose, vibrated in her brain, and whispered sleep, sleep, sleep.
Her head tilted and slid down towards her shoulder, eyes half open, half seeing
half alarmed and half soothed.
As a child she would read things for the sound of it. She would repeat lines like
they were secrets. Roll them on her tongue and savor them as they slipped from her lips.
She longed to hold them, entire phrases on her mouth, regretting that she had to
pronounce each syllable separately.
With her tongue heavy in her mouth, the same feeling crept over her. She wished
she had telepathy to throw all of her anger at these men, all of her questions, and every
hurtful phrase she could grasp. But she fell asleep wordless.
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Chapter Six
When the dead don't stay so, life must follow.
-Dr. Morgan Vasco
The smell roused Asami, a damp, dank smell like bubbling mud at low tide,
musky, with a tinge of bitterness she only smelled around feces. She struggled to focus,
to clear away whatever drug had been used to put her down. She was on a chilly white
table beside someone rigid. As she turned, sharp pains darted across her forehead, and
she saw Maxi’s water stained face in the false light: her swollen mouth purple, her cheeks
a shimmery green, her limbs unnaturally stiff and her skin marred by the beginnings of
blisters. Maxi’s face began to swirl. Asami closed her eyes to fight the dizziness. Did
the Libras think she was dead too? Had they discarded her with the dead? She pried her
eyes open. The room was small, a mere twelve by twelve feet. She wondered what had
been done with Cloey and Iki. She needed to get up and look for them, but she could not
seem to rouse herself off the table. Above her, the ceiling was stained from water leaking
onto the white panels and spreading in a rusty cloud.
A man entered. The door clicked shut behind him sounding unnaturally loud. He
had light brown eyes, turtle eyes that turned toward her as she leaned herself up into a
half sitting, half laying slouch. Her head felt weighted and though she wanted to let it
sink onto her shoulder she held herself up with both arms in order to appear alert.
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“She awakens at last.” His voice was thick and breathy.
She found her gaze tracing the wrinkles and folds of the man’s neck, skin like
wrinkled, brown paper. Balding with a salt and pepper beard and large ears, he looked
quite old and that calmed her. The man could have known the first Libra crew, which
meant, maybe, he was a little closer to the Earthens she knew than someone like Dag
could ever be. She wondered if he had children, small turtle eyed children.
“Well my dear, how do you feel?” He did not wait for her to respond, but pulled
at Maxi’s eyelids, as if checking to see if her eyeballs were still intact. Asami shuddered
at the slight drying of Maxi’s large white eyes sunken into her skull. “I would have hung
Cortie up by the toes as Susurro bait if you had remained asleep another ten minutes.”
His tone had an ironic quality that suggested false surprise. He rocked back and forth on
his small feet beaming. An electronic hum filled the room and Asami thought she should
say something in response because a response seemed to be called for, but she didn’t.
“I’m Doctor Vasco.” He extended a spotted hand. His easy smile scrunched his eyes
almost shut.
She looked at his wrinkled skin and gripped at her knees, startled by the rough
fabric. Through the pounding in her skull she wondered how she was being interpreted in
this man’s sight. What must he think of her? In some ways, he was seeing the future.
Had his ancestors remained on Earth and not traveled years through space in cryo sleep
cycles, he would have been dead before she was bom. Did he see her as advanced, or as
some feral, backwards animal?
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When she didn’t take his hand Doctor Vasco laughed. “Customs, customs, I
forget how they must be different.” He turned back to Maxi, lifting her ridged arm and
testing the skin with his thumb.
Asami didn’t correct him. People still shook hands on Earth, or they had when
she’d left. She just hadn’t wanted to touch him. Touching him would solidify the
moment, make it real. And she didn’t want it to be any more real than the smell Maxi’s
decay. She didn’t want to admit that she had lost Cloey and Iki and fallen into the hands
of barbarians and mad scientists. Her tongue felt heavy and dry. She was a specimen to
these people, a new type of human, someone from a future Earth they had never seen.
She wondered what had been done to her while she slept, besides having her clothes
changed. She pulled the itchy white tunic further over her legs, a simple V neck and
chopped sleeves. She wasn’t used to seeing so much of her own skin.
Doctor Vasco saw her look at the hospital gown. “Your clothes are all in order,
what you bring you keep; which means you belong to Dag’s section, since he found you.”
He hummed a grunt of disapproval as he pulled Maxi’s ragged braid away from her
purple and green neck. “Stay out of his way.”
“Where am I?”
“You have managed to find your way to the last remaining Libra Colony.” He
peered at her from beneath thick, long haired eyebrows. “We haven’t had a human, or
actually any specimen, from Earth for generations.”
“I’m a specimen then.” Asami drew her legs up into a sitting position.
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“Does that bother you?” His watery turtle eyes moved from their inspection of
Maxi to Asami’s face.
When she didn’t answer he smiled into one comer of his mouth. “We are all
specimens to one another my dear. I will need another sample of your blood in time, but
we will have to vaccinate you for Z.R. first.”
“Z.R.?”
“Zarmina’s Revenge.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“No, you wouldn’t, would you? Not yet anyways. Your colony has only recently
begun to tap around Gliese.”
Asami felt more and more lightheaded and forced her fingers to unlock from their
grip on the edge of the table as she ran her hands down her goose pimpled arms. Her
fingers found a small, circular patch beneath her elbow where she had already been bled.
“You put everyone here at risk until you are vaccinated. We have had a few
nasty breakouts which wiped out all but this last colony of our people. You see, Z.R.
liquefies your organs. You can’t resuscitate gelatin. We have not progressed enough to
fix that.” He sighed lifting a black plastic case onto the table beside Maxi’s head and
flicked it open. Inside, small liquid orange balls were held in black foam. “People here
will kill you themselves to prevent another epidemic. One of these treatments should
have you down for a week. You will have to rest for the next few days, until your system
can handle the virus, especially since I had to take blood already. Try to simply sleep.”
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Sleep was the last thing on her mind. She couldn’t take her eyes from the
sloshing orange liquid. It looked so harmless, and yet, it contained pieces of a deadly
virus. Her vision stuttered as her eyes refused to track. She was so lightheaded; all she
wanted to do was sleep.
He seemed to take her silence for consent and scribbled on a blue note. “Do you
still write longhand?” He asked, “I am so curious about your culture.”
As she tried to focus on his face it took on an awful clarity, as if she could see
each and every line and pore, each yellowing sag of skin. Then his face sunk in on itself,
as though he were being sucked through his own eye sockets. Asami recoiled; she closed
her eyes against the hallucination which echoed itself on the backs of her eyelids. What
drug had she been given to knock her out? How long would she be seeing things?
A part of her mind whispered that the doctor was old, she could take him, she
could grab Cloey and run, run till they were safe. The feelings shocked her, she hadn’t
resorted to violence since she was a child with no self control. But here, maybe violence
would be necessary. She felt lost in a fog of indecision. She couldn’t think, she didn’t
know enough, so she couldn’t let herself act.
“Do you have any skills? A profession?”
“Botany.”
“Pity, too bad you weren’t an engineer, but botanists good enough I suppose; we
have too many super soldiers. Section 8 then.”
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Asami took the paper. It was thick and pulpy, handmade. On it the Doctor had
scribbled a short list. His handwriting looked like curling wire.
Simple rations for two weeks
Accommodations in the hospital Ward 6
Access to standard rights
Designation: 8, greenhouse
Asami took a steadying breath filling her lungs into her back muscles. Her head
cleared a little. She was not a prisoner then. But what was she? To be designated to a
job so quickly, to be adopted into their community like a stray animal, suggested a
permanency that frightened her.
I won’t be staying, she thought, as she took the list. Her muscles ached at the
thought of a virus that melted you from the inside being purposefully injected into her
system. But if it were true, if a virus had wiped out the Libras, did that mean her own
people were in danger? “Where is Cl— , my android? Where is my android?” She slid
her feet up on the table and gripped her toes trying to press sensation into her body. A
chill scraped between her ribs. What if people back at the compound were already
infected? What was Z.R.’s incubation period?
“I have no idea.” He blinked at her owlishly, as if surprised that she would even
ask him. “But, your friend.” A set of scans blinked onto the wall: a skeleton, front and
back, an examination of a broken neck, a close up of a skull. Doctor Vasco pointed to the
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brain scan at Maxi’s chip, nail shaped. Asami’s stomach twisted seeing how enmeshed it
was, a splinter wedged deep.
“Tell me, I had thought this was an injury but it seems a more rudimentary
processing chip of sorts. Have your people, on Earth, also discovered resuscitation
techniques?” He looked greedy for the news, his brown eyes glistening. “There is no
trace of prior death, so you must be far advanced from us.”
Asami didn’t want to think about brain trivia. In Dag’s possession Cloey could be
disassembled, her pieces used in order to tape together some crude gadget these people
would use to power a weapon or string together a security camera.
“It’s just a communication chip. We don’t bring back the dead. Could you ask
around for me, about my android?” Asami’s skin crawled as her hand brushed against
Maxi’s hard, cold fingers. The dead woman’s skin felt wet but boney. A tingling
climbed up Asami’s arm into her elbow. Doctor Vasco’s response was lost in a muffled
rumble to her ears. She watched, transfixed as her own skin began to weaken, flaking
away until her arm was red muscle.
“Well,” The doctor’s voice brought her back to reality. Her skin looked white and
prickly with the cold. “Preparations will take time, but I believe I can save your friend,
with your help.”
Resuscitated with her help. A thought surfaced in her mind. These Libra people
seemed to isolate themselves. She and Maxi were the first of the Resolute crew to be
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taken to the Libra’s home, and it wasn’t as a guest, it was as a permanent member. It
seemed important, yet, Asami didn’t know what it meant.
“What do you mean my help?”
“Well I don’t have a copy of her brain prior to death, and the process will be
rougher for her. I will need your input to know if I am doing it right, if she is herself
when she comes back: how smart she should be, how stupid, how much access she
should have to information her brain may have stored away. You would know better than
myself, or any other Libra. Cortie said you were friends. Normally people decided
before death if they wish resuscitation. In this case, as her friend you would also know if
I should perform the surgeries. If you don’t want her resuscitated and Dag doesn’t need
bait, I could use her for other purposes of course.”
Asami looked dully at the scan of Maxi’s dead brain. The brain was gray and
wrinkled like a dried up leaf, except for the chip, gleaming in the black. The chip was a
strange design, not like any she had seen before, a needle thin wedge, a new design.
Asami wanted to distance herself from this politely persistent man and his smiling
demands.
“Her name is Maxi.”
“Maxi, yes, well, the dead don’t seem to care what they are called...” He trailed
off and some thought seemed to amuse him. Asami stopped listening. Dag had been
eyeing Cloey, and now her android probably belonged to him under a scavenger’s code.
She flinched as Doctor Vasco’s hand rested on the table beside her.
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“You’re closer to her, to Maxi, than any of us. Resuscitation is made easier if one
has a familiar face.”
Asami felt her face grow hot as if she was back in school and the teacher had
caught her daydreaming. She had never liked Maxi, but she should at least concentrate
when the woman’s life was being discussed over her dead body. She gripped at the table
trying not to look at Maxi’s swollen face, or the way the woman’s cloudy brown eyes
seemed to be fixed on Asami’s face.
The doctor continued. “Very few of us have asked not to be resuscitated. Mostly,
if the body is intact, we all ask for such a medical procedure.”
“How is it even possible? Her brain cells, her body, she has been dead for...”
Asami didn’t know how long she had been unconscious. By the look of Maxi’s green
flesh she had been dead at least three days.
“We have developed medical procedures, especially in our attempts to overcome
Z.R.’s, effect, on our population. We were not a large enough colony to afford death.
My Father helped develop cell regeneration based on experiments with oxygen increase
in the blood, but the real challenge is the brain.” He turned to the magnified images of
Maxi’s brain, with its damaged cells. As he talked Asami felt as if she were being buried
beneath his voice, as if a waterfall were grinding, pummeling her, and would keep
squashing her until she broke into bits. She didn’t have the energy to think, or follow
him.
“We used to ice our people as quickly as possible, it made our jobs easier with less
cells to resuscitate, sometimes oxygen therapy alone healed people, triggering the same
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cell growth that you might see in growing children, but not enough to fight Z .R .” He
looked distant and silent for a moment, and Asami wished she could lie down, but then
she would have to lie beside Maxi’s corpse which felt wrong. She wasn’t sure she cared
anymore how resuscitation worked, she just wanted to sleep.
“The brain is the true mystery. It took most of my life to adapt cell regeneration
through macrobotics. Broken bones, nerves, muscles, all of those can be fixed or
replaces with synthetics. I am sure that, on Earth, people can probably have their entire
body’s rebuilt to look the way they want them to.”
Asami swallowed wondering how much this man had guessed about her own
genetic manipulations, the things that had been done to her brain. If he resuscitated
Maxi, would those changes hold? Would the brain take its own, natural course of healing
and bypass what had been done to them at birth? Or would it build on itself like scar
tissue?
The doctor was still talking. Asami fought to pay attention “...But the brain,
repairing cells that hold memories? That is the magic.” He fluttered his hands smiling at
her, his teeth looked thick. There was a gray shadow in them. “Small robots will, in
essence force her organs to work, filling in where her own cells have failed her. The Z.R.
disease only ate living tissue, you see, so to get ahead of its destruction, I turned to
mechanical solutions that had unexpected applications. I can see that I am losing your
attention.”
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Asami pieced together an impression of the doctor’s words. Was he talking about
cyborgs? Earthen’s had not used mechanical parts to heal people in ages. It seemed
barbaric. Even when the Libra’s had left Earth, there were healing procedures that could
produce replacement organs out of real flesh.
“It is not so dissimilar to the communication chip your people use. The robotic
parts are fillers, little microscopic healers if you want. However, if you don’t think Maxi
would want to live, she would serve our community still, I always need flesh to test on,
and we can’t afford to waste anyone.”
Asami’s mouth went dry at the thought of Maxi’s body dissected here, on the very
table she was sitting on. But if the procedure wasn’t real, if resuscitated meant becoming
half robot, an android with human tissue, Asami wondered if the woman who returned to
Maxi’s body would be the same. Could a macroscopic robot repair something as
defining and elusive as memory? Would she have her own mind, or the mind of a million
invisible robots functioning for her?
If it was her brain under discussion, if it was her dead body, Asami wouldn’t
want to be brought back. But Maxi was different. She was a survivor, a volunteer. If
there was a chance that a part of Maxi would remain after the procedure, Asami had to
admit Maxi would volunteer.
In truth, even if Maxi did return an android, if there was a chance of her survival
she would be useful. She would be a second pair of eyes to analyze this place, a
completely different personality to interact with the Libras. Maybe the universe was
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forcing them to work together, even if that meant turning Maxi into a half-breed, a
machine with organic parts.
“She would have wanted it, your nano things, resuscitation.”
“Good.” His hand rested on her shoulder as if to console her. “Don’t worry.
You will be one of the first to see your friend when she gains consciences. You will be
helping me through the whole process! Now, just hold still a moment.” Doctor Vasco’s
hands were surprisingly firm as his grip on her arm shifted.
Asami froze instinctively. She had been given so many shots her body cooperated
automatically even as her mind recoiled. Part of her wanted to fight, to grab the needle
and stick it in the Doctor’s arm, but her rational mind told her the vaccine was necessary.
She felt a sharp prick and an ache in her shoulder. He withdrew a small needle, short as a
tack with the orange pill shaped glass ball connected. Z.R. When he was done Asami
pulled away and shoved off the table. When her bare feet touched the floor she felt the
loss of blood fully. Her heartbeat quickened like a snapping thread in her throat and her
head spun as if the ground were rocking under her feet. Doctor Vasco gripped her under
the arms and hauled her through the door. Another pair of arms met her through the
doorway.
“Help her to Ward 6. She may not make it. I took a full sample of her blood.
And make her take a food tablet, and maybe more sleepy-time.”
She was escorted from the cubicle room by a male nurse. His easy smile and
chit chat was lost on her. The hall was warping in and out like pulsing black spots.
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Asami saw a wash of identical doors and hallways, white walls that shone like
plastic and metal doors that reminded her of the mental ward she had read in Ken Kesey's
Cuckoo holo book. Heidi had asked why she had chosen such a sad book, and Asami
recalled words she might have quoted, or just thought, as she looked up now at the plastic
hall's rectangular windows kept near the ceiling, at the top, as if a patient might try to
climb out one.
It had been a quote maybe, because the words had struck her, and she had recited
them before a mirror, looking at the pale moon colored hair on her Chinese face, her ice
blue eyes. Her face looked all mixed up about who it wanted her to be and the words
seemed to fit. "That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to
be that face. I wasn't even really me then, I was just being the way I looked, the way
people wanted."
She found that she was crying, and that made her giggle, and the spectacle she
must be laughing and crying all at once made her cry harder. Mad house, she thought.
Nurses passed by, all dressed in white and paisley green buttoned lab coats. Some
of them carried food trays. Others wheeled metal carts with plastic boxes that were once
white but were now stained brown.
The nurse who pulled her along called himself Brendan. He was tall, over six feet
with buzzed brown hair. He patted her wet cheeks with a handkerchief and chatted to her
but all she could hear was the loud thumping of her blood in her ears. She was too tired
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to laugh or cry now, and had to lean on his arm more than she liked as her legs felt ready
to give way.
At last they stopped in front of a metal door with a large G over the top. Brendan
took out a ring and pressed a flat piece of dull metal to the door. Asami heard a shift and
clang of gears in the door before it released opening by an inch.
“Here we are then,” he helped her inside with a self pleased smile.
The room was as small as the doctor’s cubicle. The walls were the same plastic
white as the hallways. They even had a slight sanitary shine. No windows, a simple
ledge with a foam pad and blanket. One table which served as a storage unit also sat
beside the ledge and a thick yellow candle sat in the center of it.
Asami’s tablet lay on the table, her survival suit packed neatly inside a drawer.
But no Cloey. She must have blacked out because the next thing she knew, Brendan was
waking her long enough to make her swallow a large brown nutrition tablet and drink the
full glass of water which tasted slightly base. She was struck by his cheerful iteration of
the obvious. Look, she had a bed there, and a little table, she should be quite happy here,
but no he had not seen her android or cat.
Dragging herself from the makeshift bed Asami tried the door after he left. She
found it locked after him. She had made a mistake going with Dag. She should have
kept her distance, observed him. Cloey and Iki could be dead or worse because of her.
Asami banged at the door as if force might shift the gears inside until her hands stung and
the room began to spin once more. This wasn’t the first time she had given blood, Heidi
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had taken samples, but it had never left her so drained. Whatever drug they had knocked
her out with hadn’t faded. She almost felt motion sick, as if gravity had shifted, lessened,
as if she were too light.
She was unable to find a connection on her tablet, and the light of its screen soon
began to make her queasy which encouraged her to shut her eyes. She was unsure how
long she lay there, shifting in and out of consciousness when the door opened and Cloey
walked in, a large pan held before her. Relief flooded through Asami like heat loosening
her lungs and muscles.
Brendan grinned, “I found her for you. And look she made you bread pudding. I
wish I had someone to make me bread pudding.” His face became a comical pout.
“Well that’s a fact, who wouldn’t want my bread pudding. I am an excellent
baker.” Cloey had piled her blond mass of hair up in a bun like a perfect donut.
Asami sat up and felt water drip onto her hands. She looked down at her knuckles
in surprise. Two slightly muddy drops, like tears, glistened on her palms. She looked up
at the ceiling. It had a faint crack with a small pool of water. The pool was growling. It
spread until it coated the entire plastic ceiling like a layer of jell. And then it rained
softly, happy little droplets that bounced off her nose and spotted her tunic.
Asami laughed, lifting her hands up to catch the droplets.
“Asami?” Cloey came back into focus and the rain disappeared. Asami shivered.
Her skin felt clammy and she wrapped the thin blanket more tightly round her shoulders.
“It’s the antidote. She’s just hallucinating a bit.” Brendan said friendly like.
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Was that all? Asami thought tartly. She squinted at the ceiling. There was a fine
fracture in the plastic. And somehow, she knew there must be water above them. It
weighed in her mind like a storm cloud on the morning air.
She reached out to hug Cloey, “I thought Dag had done something to you...”
Asami trailed off. Cloey’s eyes had always been blue, blue like her own, but now there
were rings in them, orange rings, and the blue was flecked with it. The room slid
sideways and she found herself laying down on her side, arms hugging Cloey’s waist.
“What happened to your eyes?”
“Pretty as ever aren’t they?” Cloey asked, fluttering her eyelashes, but the orange
circles glowed like planet rings around her pupil.
“All settled are we?” Brendan asked, the perfect, cheery imitation of a host, as if
Asami were a Lady at a resort and he was off to grab her Champaign. “Just pop up to see
me, well,” he seemed to rethink that, “better to send Cloey if you need anything.” As if
she had a choice. Brendan retreated murmuring something to Cloey that made her appear
quite pleased.
“Have you seen Iki?” Asami watched Brendan go, hoping the cat would thread
through his legs into the room. But she couldn’t sense him at all.
“Some creepy woman in a drab blue coat took him. Seriously, she looked like she
hadn’t washed her hands in weeks. She had black stuff under her nails. Her hair was
fabulous though. What I could do with red locks.”
Asami felt anxious. What did these people do with animals? Eat them?
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“Do you know where she took him?”
“I kind of had my own problems,” Cloey huffed through her nose.
“I’m really glad you’re ok.”
“I was so not when I woke up and you were gone. I thought for sure they had
taken you as some virgin sacrifice to consecrate their dead.”
Asami laughed, “That might not be so far off. Who turned you on?”
“You might wonder after your little trick in the vehicle,” Cloey glared, her
prosthetic eyelids narrowed. “Do you have any idea how disconcerting it is to be woken
up in the dark, like some horror vid-link and then to be turned off at the climax? Imagine
my alarm when that big yellow fellow turned me on again. I near screamed with fright.
He has so much hair,” She sat down next to Asami. “Mind you, he could be gorgeous if
he would only cut that mane off, don’t you think?”
Asami only grunted and curled a finger in Cloey’s sweater, relief had made her
slightly tipsy and she felt herself smiling too widely. She must be hallucinating. Cloey’s
eyes were blue, like her own. When Cloey remained silent for a whole minute Asami
exerted herself enough to ask where she had been taken after Cortie woke her.
Cloey recounted how Cortie claimed to have saved her from being dismantled,
like he was some hero, she rolled her eyes. Dag had given his consent for her to be
woken if she could be put to use for him. ‘I woke up first to Blondie, really, his locks
are longer than mine, and then-” she schooled her features into a scowling impression of
Dag. “You stay you work.” But Asami would have to see the compound to believe it,
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entirely underground, the kitchen alone measured 2,000 square feet. And from her
internal calculations, gravity had lessened. So she asked and found out they were on a
moon. She looked at Asami expressively to let that idea settle.
Asami felt her smile flee. How was she going to rescue them from a moon?
What moon? How drugged had she been, and for how long? Ideas of escape suddenly
looked far more complicated.
Cloey continued, satisfied by Asami’s shock. She had been sent to the kitchens to
wash dishes, like they needed a fully functioning android to be a robotic arm from a
sanitation unit to a storage unit. Please. “Do I look like a dishwasher?” She talked her
way out of that crap job fast. Anyways, anything she earned went right to Dag’s pocket,
why feed that ego? “But as a chef I can at least bring you some real food.”
Asami asked why she had gone to the trouble. She had no intention of staying.
“I don’t know, to make something amazing,” Cloey set the still hot pan down on
the blanket, her prosthetic fingertips protected by a thick towel. “Can you believe the
chefs here didn’t know what cinnamon raisin bread was? Or bread pudding for that
matter? I had to use plain old sweet bread, but it’s delicious.”
Asami smiled, knowing Cloey had no taste buds even if she were capable of
chewing the food. Cloey must have done it all for her. She had to wonder what Cloey
would have turned her mind to if she hadn’t been programmed as Asami’s caretaker.
There were programs that could grow on their own, and some day Asami planned to buy
Cloey one. As it was, Cloey’s personality type thrived on social activity. She was a
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walking broadcast. Asami could imagine what she could have been on Earth, hairdresser
to the rich and famous, fashion designer.
“Well, one good thing, they won’t let me back into the kitchen without an
upgrade. I have orders to get myself a new skin,” Cloey brandished a paper note not
unlike the one Asami had been given.
Upgrade: one petite, child’s synthetic skin
Designation: 5, Chef
Cloey glowed with an independent pride that made Asami both proud and
frightened. What if, despite the way the world seemed to work, despite Cloey’s
disadvantages, what if she left Asami behind? What would she be without Cloey? A
loner with no friends, and an obsession with vegetables.
“Why do you look so sad? I thought you would be happy to see me.” Cloey
pouted.
“I’m really glad you’re alright.”
“You’ll be gladder once you try this.” Cloey placed a spoon in Asami’s fingers.
“I’d invite you to help with my remodel, but Brendan said you have Z.R. and that sounds
like a zombie drug.”
“More like a mutation, from solid to liquid.” Asami took a spoonful of the bread
pudding under Cloey’s watchful eye, her stomach clenching as she watched the bread
quiver like gelatin. “Sort of like bread pudding.”
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It was every bit as good as Cloey boasted, even if the consistency did make her
stomach turn, imagining her insides to be softening into a similar mush.
When Brendan came to let Cloey out of the room Asami set the spoon aside, her
insides clenching as Cloey got up to leave again. She wanted to keep her in sight, but
Cloey was so excited for an upgrade she couldn’t ask her to stay. She couldn’t let herself
spoil Cloey’s euphoria. Asami watched her go with less cheerfulness than she had meant
to convey. Cloey floated out and Asami concentrated on breathing, distracting herself by
imagining the small invading Z.R. agents infecting her cells, ready to attack her organs,
attempting to mutate and liquefy her.
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Chapter Seven
The looking glass reverses my face. If she who looks back stepped out to be with me,
then the world could know me as I know myself.
-Cloey
Asami woke from a dream. The room was a waterfall, and the water was parting.
She felt better, but groggy as she lifted herself to greet Cloey. She pasted on a bright
smile, determined not to make Cloey worry. She would figure things out, get them back
to the planet, away from the Libras. The door opened fully. Dag took up the entire
entryway, bending to enter the small cell. His black pebbly eyes were on her like a raven
eyeing a juicy bug, his face distorted into planes, sharp edges, surfaces like ice and stone
mixed together. His black hair was braided tightly now, in what seemed to be the warrior
fashion, spikes sticking through the knot of hair like metal teeth. If she grabbed that
braid, jaws would snap shut. Her smile dissolved. She had forgotten how large he was,
his hands were plates, his blackened nails bit back into sharp claw like nubs.
“It’s time you showed me what use you are to me.” He came at her, unhurried,
sure, and when she would not stand, would not go with him, he hefted her over his
shoulders. Her nails bit at the raw hide jacket on his back, leaving thin white lines,
nothing compared to the jagged scars left my some creature’s talons. The ground heaved
under her, as if she were indeed floating in a rowboat of shoulders. She was beyond
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anger, her head was still floating, no use to anyone. What could he possibly want from
her?
They came to a halt so suddenly that the spiked braid cut into her side, puncturing
through her hospital garb.
“Where are you taking her?” Brendan's voice asked. Asami tried to crane her
neck around Dag's massive, muscled back but he was too broad, like a buffalo, she
thought.
“Out of my way boy.”
“She’s my patient. She still has Z.R. running in her system.”
Dag didn't ask again. Asami felt Dag’s muscles shift under her hands, heard a
thud, and as Dag walked on she looked down into Brendan's white face from his
crumpled form on the floor. His eyes were blazing as he licked at the cut on his lip,
staggering back to his feet, watching Dag's back as if it were a target.
Dag walked down, through steps and steps, into the roaring of a cave. He
dropped her on the floor, which gave slightly, as if the ground were weak, dirt lifting in
the air around her. She turned, taking in the room, a shadowy den, the walls a dusty
brown, and a crowd of bodies circling a lit up stadium. The pit was set up like an arena,
the floor was dirt with muddy puddles, the top caged over with wire, like a dome, and in
the center was the dented, metal crate like the one that contained the Susurro on her
kidnap cadaver voyage to the moon. The crowd was drawn back from a podium, which
seemed to house the special guests. Standing at the podium, beside Cortie, was Cloey.
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Even from a distance, her orange tinted eyes flashed like flames making her appear god
like. Not a hallucination.
Dag gripped Asami by the neck, her legs scraping across the floor as he opened a
wire door in the pit's webbing. Three woman garbed in wolf fur held spitting electric
rods towards the wires, as if to prevent something from getting out.
“Time for you to earn your keep Blue Eyes.” Dag shoved her through the door,
letting her fall five feet into the dirt. Asami lay prone for a moment, feeling every ache
and pain sting through her palms, elbows and knees. The crowd roared. Asami looked
up in time to roll away. A blunt, wooden club with a spiked end almost landed on her
back as Dag dropped it in after her. What was she supposed to do? A small part of her
felt like laughing, as if she were in the Holo Lab, dressed like a primitive about to fight a
lion with a bat. The bemusement faded as the roar of the crowd vibrated on the air. Her
side stung, a thin beading of blood spotted her garment where Dag’s spike had pinched
her. Unlike the Holo Lab, if she died, it wouldn’t be a game. Not to her. Though maybe
if they were delusional enough to think they could bring the dead back, this was a game
to them. They were ready to watch her die. Who did they want her to fight? She
searched the arena.
Cloey watched in horror as Asami stepped out further into the cage. Libras
gripped at the bars, rattling them, clambering at her. Flashes of metal discs passed hands,
they were gambling. Asami tried to thrust the thoughts from her mind, waiting for the
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adversary to be let in, wondering who they would pit her against. Cortie stood straight,
looking pale; his eyes fixed upon her in what might be dismay.
This was bad. Something was wrong, the crowed was too blood thirsty, salivating
as if they expected the final blow to be stuck any second. She circled towards the crate in
the center of the field and felt her heart stutter. The side had been ripped open. She
looked about wildly for the source and saw Cloey shrieking at her, waving above her
head. Asami threw herself across the pit, and heard a heavy thud behind her, dust raising
around...nothing. She looked at Dag, his expression neutral, uncaring, waiting for her to
get on with it. He stopped looking at her entirely, his eyes studying Cloey. He had put
the Susurro in with her. Trembling Asami looked to Cloey again, she was screaming at
her, run. Asami fled aimlessly, the pit was a circle, her mind rotated thinking fast. How
could she fight something she couldn't see? But the creature had effects in the real world;
water would drip down its outline, the dust cloud. She had to draw it into sight. Asami
grabbed handfuls of dirt, searching for the muddiest sections of the pit, throwing clouds
and wet clods around her.
There, to the right, the cloud seemed to land, dusting a massive chest, or was it an
arm? Asami gripped the crude mace more firmly, backing away and throwing more dirt
in the air, watching the particles float towards her. In her mind she reached out wildly, I
don't want to hurt you.
The response was a low, warm laughed that soured into a cold, chuckling tinkle.
It sounded female. I t ’s me you should worry about hurting you.
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The blow, when it came, aimed right at her head. Asami ducked, feeling the
power of the thrust shift the air overhead, attempting to decapitate her. She had to fight
then. The next swing, when it came, took her feet out from under her bruising the backs
of her legs. She rolled and heaved to her feet running; she had to form a plan. Could the
creature read her thoughts? She began to fling up ideas in her mind, her favorite foods,
the number of constellations she would choose to live in, the ribbons she bought for
Cloey on her birthday.
So dull. You think those could distract me?
So it did know her thoughts. She let her mind babble, moving on instinct alone,
swinging the blunt weapon round her when she sensed her opponent lunge.
A door opens both ways. The Susurro reminded her.
She didn't dare open her mind to it, it would crush her like a bug, but she began to
sense its movements, circling her, playing.
You should clear your mindfor this fight. You're thoughts leave a frantic trail. I
can taste it miles away. The last one o f you hairless, smelly, noisy, birds Ifeasted on
screamed the whole time while I pinched his mind centimeter by centimeter into insanity.
You like to kill us. No surprise there.
You know the first time I didn't. I wasn't even trying to; I had no idea how soft
your minds were. Iju st tried to say hello, and the echo o f all the other minds in my own
sent his self awareness into hiding. I think the rest o f your strange family sent him down
as bait, useful to the end.
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There was that word again, useful. Asami glanced at Dag but he was still
watching Cloey, who looked ready to pop, miming a side roll to the left. She dived and
felt the ground shake where she had stood. The Susurro withdrew, climbing up the bars
towards the ceiling. They sagged downwards with her weight. Yes, she was positive it
was a female, an angry wrathful female. And she was hiding something, keeping
something purposefully out of her thoughts...
You do taste different than the others. Someone has been meddling with your
mind...
Asami felt the creature hanging above her, like a great bear bat. Cloey looked
about ready to explode, gesturing up. How did Cloey know where the Susurro was? She
tried to smile, reassuring. Asami could sense how physically inferior she was in every
way. The Susurro was all muscle, it could scale walls, it was invisible, it could crush her
with her own thoughts if she let it inside her. She was also far more volatile and angry
than any of the Sussuri Asami could remember, except when they were mating or.... Hot
tempered, impulsive...protective.
The Susurro dropped. Asami spun out, bringing the blunt club up in an arc. It
connected in the air with a dull thud and ricocheted off, hitting Asami's shoulder. A love
tap to this colossus. A chuckle rolled over her like a hot wind. And faintly, another mind
touched her, so small Asami had thought it was just an echo of the mother—a baby.
The Susurro roared in her mind, and then out loud. The cage rattled with the
noise and Asami ran, fearing that the mother, who had just been warming up to toying
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with Asami, would really kill her now. She scrambled about the metal box, waiting for
the death blow. The Susurro's mind was a chaos. Blind fury. Hot, white, molten flames.
Asami searched for a line of reasoning, desperately.
I w on’t hurt you. I didn 't know you had a baby.
The roar grew louder. A hush had fallen over the crowd, their faces leaning in
towards the pit, searching, salivating for what could make that unearthly noise. The
Susurro leapt. An unlucky man had leaned into the wire cage right beside the angry
Susurro and he was dragged right through the wire cage, the metal jerking frantically,
bending. He landed in a cloud of dust, and scrambled to his feet. He looked about
himself, like a trembling lizard testing the air. His arm broken, his shoulder displaced.
And then there was a loud thwack, and he was a still, crumpled pile in the dirt. Asami
shuddered. Was that her fate, wide-eyed pain and then nothing?
The doctor had appeared on the podium beside a bloody mouthed Brendan,
shouting, pointing, demanding. Would he get her out of the pit? Dag looked at him
serenely, offering the old man his chance in the pit if he wanted to take Asami's place.
The Susurro prowled to the other end of the cage, roaring into the crowd. Asami
scrambled towards the man, looking for a weapon, anything.
You’ve decided to kill me then, little one?
There was nothing inside the pen that could kill this creature. Nothing but
thoughts.
Arrogant beasty.
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Cloey looked purple in the face, oil leaking from her glowing orange eyes like
tears. Dag watched Asami now. He didn’t care if she died. He was waiting for it. She
found Doctor Vasco’s eyes upon her too, no longer enraged, but fascinated, as if he too,
were sensing the conversation between prey and predator.
How would you like to go? The Susurro’s velvety mind asked, luring her
thoughts like a flower opening to the morning. She was suddenly close, a hairs breadth
away as she stroked Asami’s cheek. The hairs that had hardened into claws now loose,
soft as feathers, feathers that could turn into needles.
Asami sensed the Susurro losing interest in her, a sudden pain across her abdomen
consuming her attention. She was rubbing her stomach where the baby hid. How had
Dag caught her? The Susurri valued their children above all else, because it cost a life to
make one.
You are one ofW aheed’s projects. I can smell him all over your mind.
I do n ’t want to hurt you. I ju st want to leave. Asami stood very still picturing the
Resolute colony, she never thought she could miss it. She felt the Sussurro’s interest in
this desire, and stood stiffly, wondering when the temperamental mother would change
her mind and strike her dead.
Did you know our children’s first instinct is to kill us? The Susurro crawled
towards the wire meshing. What do you think their second impulse will be?
Asami shuddered. The Susurro was offering her up to her newborn, its first
human kill.
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Asami sensed the baby emerging, his mind flourishing, and she waited for it to
attack its mother. She had never been permitted to witness this with Waheed. But all
she could sense was love. The baby embraced his mother, his mind mingling with hers.
Suddenly, like a chill frosting over the room, Asami sensed more minds, reaching out
around her, watching as the child absorbed the mother’s mind.
As the mother died Asami felt the other Susurri minds join in the sorrow, saluting,
they appeared, gazed at the child and slipped away, back into apathy. How many?
Asami felt iced to her core. How many were being kept here, and why, and howl What
devices had the Libras invented that could control such powerful creatures?
The baby was calling for her. His mind serene, digesting his mother’s
consciousness. Could she hide him? Keep him a secret? Why would she want to? She
bent down beside him and felt her breath leave her body in a tight hiss. There was no
hiding him. He wasn’t completely invisible. His fur phased pieces of him in and out, as
though he were a stuttering hologram. Did they evolve that ability, she wondered? He
lay curled, wet, steaming. Her eyes had never seen one before. He had an oval, black
head, a light brown snout. His nose was a wet black dot. On his chest was a brown stain
amidst the fur, a circle, a hoop with black fur in the center. He was covered in hair that
shifted, hardened and softened and swayed like seaweed in the ocean. His hands were
starfish, opening and closing in his mother’s fur. His eyes were placed like an owl’s,
large and predatory, there seemed to be constellations in their inky, navy depths, small
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star flecks sparking up at her, blinking at her. She found herself making promises. I will
help you. I will get you home, Kanad.
She didn’t know if she named him, or if he had chosen it, and put the name in her
thoughts. Kanad seemed to accept her as a foster parent. She lifted him into her arms, a
heavy warm bundle.
Cloey rushed to her as Cortie opened the gate, throwing her arms around Asami’s
middle as she was hauled out.
“I saw it all, I don’t know how, but I saw it\ You were so dead!”
She felt Kanad shift away from Cloey, struggling as the android peered down at
him. He shuddered in pain, as if a million little needles were poking his mind.
“Cloey, you’re hurting him.”
“Oh!” Cloey backed away, blinking with those new, orange eyes. As she backed
away the pain receded.
Asami stared up at Dag, feeling Kanad’s eyes shift between them, borrowing from
her knowledge of him.
“It seems you survived, Blue Eyes.” Dag looked passive, ambivalent. She had
expected disappointment, but it seemed he had learned what he wanted to know.
“If you wanted to kill me, I guess you shouldn’t have put me in a pit with a
pregnant opponent.” Asami clutched the baby closer as the Doctor bustled to the
forefront.
He looked greedily down at the baby.
I l l
“Finders keepers. Isn’t that the rules here?” Asami held Kanad closer. She
didn’t know if it was the baby compelling her to protect him, or if she actually wanted to,
but she didn’t want to hand him over.
“Give it to the Doctor.” Dag said, and walked away.
Asami sensed the baby protest as he was pulled from her arms. A searing
headache filled her mind, and the doctor laughed, clutching at his own forehead.
“Naughty thing isn’t it? I’m so taken with him I almost didn’t keep my guard up.
If you were your mother, my brain would be a splashed pie.” He chuckled, tickling
Kanad with a finger. Kanad snapped at the finger. If the doctor got too close, he would
bite it off.
“He can still kill you doctor.” Asami said, allowing Cloey to pull her away.
Reason told her she had enough people to save without adding a baby to the list, but she
would find a way.
Cortie reached for her, his face still stiff with worry. “I had no idea Dag would do
that Asami.”
Asami looked him up and down, confused at the guilt in his eyes. “Don’t trouble
yourself.”
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The sound of scraping woke Asami. She was surprised to see the empty room
taken up with an additional cot and blanket, a second candle, two large bags and a box of
cleaning supplies. It took her a moment to recognize Cloey, who was industrially
scrubbing her bald metal head. A thin layer of dust from her hair follicles littered the
floor and one bag was full of her old prosthetics.
Cloey squeaked when Asami asked if she needed help.
“No, oh how I wanted to be finished before you woke up! I so wanted to surprise
you with my new look.” Without the prosthetic face Cloey was strangely inanimate, her
features muted by the metal’s shiny surface and marred by stains. But her voice
conveyed all her vexation.
Asami got up. The world finally seemed righted, the hallucinations gone. But
somewhere inside, she felt a tug upwards, and knew Kanad was close. A part of her mind
was occupied by him, as if he were circling inside her head, looking out through her eyes.
Now that he was removed from her, she felt less attached, less consumed by a need to
protect him. Did he have the ability to persuade her emotions?
Grateful for an occupation, anything to take her mind off the baby alien, Asami
helped to clean Cloey’s metallic plating of rust and leftover synthetic residue. Her head
was smaller without the mass of blond hair, a child sized head, perfectly formed to mimic
a human head, imperfectly round. Asami scrubbed at the rust where the synthetic mask
had met with the hair line forming an orange ring around Cloey’s face. The metal on
Cloey’s face was different; it was pliable, capable of movement, full of joints that moved
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like the human ligaments and muscles beneath skin. Asami cleaned these parts gently,
noticing how age and use had left dust and gunk in each crevice. Her metal eyelids were
black with synthetic residue. Her blue eyes still glowed with orange circles. Asami
wondered when Dag had modified her. He had learned today that Cloey could see the
Susurri. Would he take her back to Gliese? Make her help them hunt down more
Susurri?
Cloey tilted her head, deciphering Asami’s worried frown.
Asami shook herself. “Someday we will get you a lightweight frame with the
proper coatings so you won’t rust,” She added in her head, as well as new coolant tubes.
Cloey had insisted on keeping her old face. It floated, soaking in a green
hydration mix. Unattached from Cloey’s person, it looked lifeless, the rosy cheeks a
counterfeit of Cloey’s bubbly smiles, the eyelids empty.
Asami carefully combed each gap and line in Cloey’s face, picking away grime,
and sand. As she worked, she felt Kanad’s interest grow. He had no memories of
androids up close, and none that included emotions of love. Cloey kept her eyes closed,
lifting her face as if Asami were giving her a makeover. When she finished, Asami
watched as Cloey took a face mask, dripping with oily polish, and pasted it across her
forehead. Her metal fingers smoothed it down her chin.
“You really should be doing a facial too. You need a deep cleaning mask after all
that sand, not to mention the morgue trip and the barbarian pit.”
“Somehow, I don’t think beauty is a priority here.”
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Cloey snorted, “Trust me, it’s a priority. Have you seen the way the men show
off their face decorations?”
Asami grinned, “They do like their hair too.”
She took a rough brush and scrubbed at the broader metal plates on Cloey’s back.
Flakes of rust formed a powder on her hands. Asami blew the dust off and brushed it
from the edges of Cloey’s back plates. Her spine was a shaped rod that connected to each
plate and curved up her neck to the base of her skull.
With the prosthetics gone, Asami could see inside Cloey, almost through her.
Aged blue coolant tubes ran through her neck, encasing her power generator, and through
her arms and legs. The tubes, once clear and electric blue were now sluggish and cloudy.
The gap in her torso, where Asami’s tablet could be stored, made Cloey look too thin,
rib-less.
When she had been scrapped almost clean of rust, though stains and patches
remained, Asami helped to polish a finish over the metal. It was brown and oily, but it
would help to keep moisture out and let her new synthetic skin apply easily.
The new skin floated in a vat of green hydration jell. Cloey opened the tub
eagerly, pulling out the hands first, wiping jell away. They fit like small white gloves.
Asami pulled out two miniature feet. She shook the jell off, surprised by its slimy
texture. It made the skin feel like rubber. Asami set Cloey’s foot on her lap and pulled
the synthetic skin on like toe socks. Once the skin was in place she began to rub, aligning
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each toenail with Cloey’s metal indentations. The skin would take time to adhere
completely.
Cloey grew impatient with Asami’s careful placement and took her feet back.
“You’re too gentle! It doesn’t hurt; in fact I won’t feel anything until the skin
adheres to my electronic processor.”
“Still feels like I’m skinning you backwards.” Asami watched Cloey slide the
arms on like tube sleeves as quickly as if she were getting dressed. The torso piece went
on like a sleeveless turtleneck dress with slits that allowed it to be molded to her. Cloey’s
hand’s smoothed it down her sides and over her hips and thighs. The ankle, calf and knee
were all separate tubes meant to fit seamlessly together.
Eagerly, Cloey reached for her synthetic face. Asami helped her to fix it into
place again, the ears slipping easily over the metal joints on either side of Cloey’s head as
she fitted first the mouth and then her eyes and nose. Once the mask was well secured
Cloey blinked and popped her lips as if she had added makeup. Asami noticed that even
with the new prosthetics, her joints were still too loose, leaving gaps between her
shoulders and arms, wrists and forearms, neck and clavicle.
Cloey pulled the last fresh piece of prosthetic flesh over her scalp like a hood.
She let it settle, melting into the line of her forehead, molding behind her small waxen
ears and down into her thin neck. Asami helped to smear the setting cream across
Cloey’s prosthetics, allowing the skin to adhere to her metallic frame. Had her joints been
better fitted the skin would have connected seamlessly.
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Cloey looked herself over in a small mirror. “You were right about my eyes.” She
tilted her face this way and that. “I think Cortie must have installed them.” She blinked
several times, testing them. “I did think they felt too smooth.”
Asami didn’t think it was Cortie, the way Dag had watched Cloey during the fight.
Dag was planning something.
Cloey tried on a smile, placing the tangled mass of blond curls in a bag with her old
skin. The only piece left in Cloey’s bag was the small blue wig Asami had picked out.
Cloey saw Asami’s curiosity and pulled it out.
“I think it suits me don’t you? You aren’t sad about the old hair are you? I know
you gave it to me, we were twinsies, but, I couldn’t salvage it with a new skin.”
Asami reassured her that she thought the wig fit her beautifully, and it was high time
she had a new style. Secretly she felt pleased that Cloey had chosen to wear the wig she
had given her over some other head piece the Libra’s might have offered.
The blue wig sat like hat on her head, a new Cloey. She pulled it over her scalp and
shifted it until it sat just right, the mathematical scanner in her eyes calculating the hairs
position. Cloey swiveled from side to side viewing her reflection as Asami held the
mirror out. When it fit just right Cloey tapped the hair connector at the back of her neck.
It came alive on her prosthetic head, roots sinking in, attaching themselves deep into the
outer flesh layer.
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Cloey dressed in her new work uniform, a starch white shirt that was too large and
fit more like a dress over black pants. She had cut and rolled the sleeves up to her
elbows. Turning in the mirror she looked older, more adult with her styled hair.
Cloey turned from the mirror, her bright orange eyes glowing with activity,
brought out by her new blue look. She was almost dancing on her toes. For once, Asami
thought, Cloey might be speechless.
Asami grinned and scrubbed her oily hands on the course hospital gown.
“Ugh you’re such a grub monkey. That’s a rags job” Cloey scowled and slapped
Asami’s hands away from the stained skirt before returning to the mirror. “I look
amazing, well other than the horrid uniform.” She wound her finger in a straight strand
of short blue hair. “What do you think? I think the straight hair is sleek, but I could curl
it for a romantic look.”
“I feel bad for those kitchen boys already.” Asami sighed.
Cloey tossed her head. “We are aiming for men Asami, meh-nuh.”
Asami arched her eyebrows with a small smile, “Of course, meh-nuh.”
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Chapter Eight
We have learned quickly that home is where you can die more than once.
-Cortie Delgato
Kanad had been taken back to the black room where his mother had been caged.
But instead of the smooth metal box she had been squeezed into, his cage had wires. His
mother had sensed that the room was not smooth and curving like the caves of the
Susurri, but flat walled and filled with bolder sized cages. He twisted round on himself.
For months he had not known his own body, he had been watching and listening,
and thinking with his mother’s far more flexible mind. Now he was alone in a small
frame, in a weakened mind. His hands could not crush the metal bars, nor even bend
them; the hair’s on his palms were still growing, not yet ready to harden and cut. There
was a stinging hum all around the cage, what his mother had called electricity, and it
caused all the fur that covered every inch of him to harden into a protective shell. While
that lessened the sting, it also left him blind to his surroundings. His mother’s fur had
smelled and sensed the world so adeptly that while inside her, he had been able to hear
the heartbeats of these stinky bird-people rooms away. Now, he could only see with his
eyes, which were no good for close range, they were meant to look upwards at the stars,
to peer through constellations in the deepest of night, or the brightest of day.
Additionally, the tumult of information his mother had passed down to him roiled
like an electric storm inside his head. He needed help to sort through it; he needed the
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minds of his people to help order the mess of memories and knowledge. But the hum of
minds that should have surrounded him was cut off. The Susurri nearest him had
retreated into their own mind-space, retracted from one another. His mother had known
this would happen, she had tried to speak with the other Susurri before his birth, and
something about their apathy had enraged her. Some of that rage rippled across Kanad’s
back fur now, forming blades. The only mind open to his was not even Susurri. His
mother had been replaced instead by a, a smelly bird-girl, as his mother had called her.
His mother had linked them as she should have linked him to the oldest, wisest Susurri
present. The bird-girl’s mind was attached to his now, he could see her like a blue star in
the dark, far away. She was not in the same cave system as he was, but he could sense
her through walls. She called herself Asami. He preferred stinky bird-girl. He had to be
careful of her if he wanted to keep her alive; it was too easy to squash her mind. He had
seen his mother do it many times, to other stinky bird-people.
The bars of his cage pulsed with repulsive signals, scalding his feet. They
radiated beneath him, but if he kept his fur hard as rock the signals only vibrated
unpleasantly against his stomach and feet. This left him unaware to whatever lay
underneath, having no sense of the world below. The hair around his face and back
moved, swaying, tasting for information. Outside, there was the smell of life. Odors his
mother had never bothered to categorize; odors of the bird-people; odors of their
creations: animals, plants, foods. His mother thought they were all evil creations, but he
wondered, were they all bad? He plucked at Asami’s mind, the flavor of her thoughts,
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like nothing he had ever tasted before. She tasted and smelled green. Like the plants she
called pine needles, spicy and fresh, delicate but musty. He wanted more of that smell.
The bird-girl tossed unhappily in her sleep. The cut from someone she called Dag
had scabbed over in a reddish-brown crust, but the skin around it was pink and inflamed.
Kanad didn’t know if that was good or bad. The air was thick and warm, his mind was
full of electricity, he needed help. He drew on her sleeping mind, coaxed it towards him,
just a little space in her head maybe? She wasn’t using much of it. Her small bit of mind
fit easily, almost imperceptibly, into his vast head. He tried to poor some of his mind into
her, only a drop. He paused. She seemed aware of him now, he was on her thoughts.
Hunger rose inside him. It was his instinct to absorb her mind, but that would kill
her, he was sure. It would be so easy. Sharp laces of pain knotted between his eyes,
pressing forward against the skin. He needed food of a different kind. He left her mind
alone. There was another bird-creature in the room with him now.
Kanad unhardened the fur round his face in order to see and hear. The birdcreature had a heavy, slow step. He was small, slightly bent in the back, and skinny.
Kanad could not get used to the stringy appearance of these creatures, how long their
limbs were. He drew on Asami’s memories. She knew the man, she called him Doctor
Vasco. The Doctor held a bright light. He approached Kanad’s cage and flared the light
stick in Kanad’s face. The whiteness knifed at Kanad’s star gazing eyes, right at their
pupils, causing his second eye skin to slip down defensively blacking out the world.
Then the light was gone, his eye-skin lifted, and then the horrible glow drifted back.
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Hissing in annoyance Kanad turned round in the cage, folding in, away from the
humming bars and the knifing light.
Something prodded his side, hard, gouging at his new forming flesh beneath the
fur. He hardened the hair, cutting the prodding device off at the tips, hoping it was his
tormenter's fingers. There was a lovely tang of iron in the air. He licked at the air with
tongue and fur, tasting as he curled around to sniff the object trapped between his hairs.
It was lifeless. Metallic. He licked it, feeling pleasant tingles prickle down his neck and
long spine.
A chuckle disturbed the air. Doctor Vasco's face leaned close to the bars of the
window. His watery brown eyes with their delicate red blood vessels leered at Kanad,
ugly, furless, beady-eyed worm eyes. These were the creatures his mother hated. So
close, so edible, so hungry. He reached out his mind, uncoiled it like an organ ready to
strike. Just a taste, too hard, and he would crush the old man, gently, and he could coax
him to unlock the cage. Then he would crush him. Squish his fat juicy mind and devour
his knowledge.
The bars sprang to life as he tried to edge past with his mind material. Hot sparks
shot through his facial hair, his fur recoiled, curling, burning. He folded in on himself his
hair ringing with pain and hardening all around until he resembled a smooth spotted
stone.
"Tut, tut, little one. Now you know. You can't go eating just anyone’s brains
around here." Doctor Vasco chuckles.
1 2 2
Kanad’s mind retreated towards safety, towards Asami. His mind vibrated and
smoked as he shoved through the electric bars again, but his connection with Asami was
stronger. The hairs along his body sizzled. He didn’t want to go back to it. He crammed
his mind in with Asami’s, filling up the space she wasn’t using. Her skull was too small,
too tight. She startled awake, her thoughts erratic. He saw through her eyes, green and
black splotches, the taste of blood melted over her tongue. Her throat constricted in a
scream. She was displaced, pinched down like paper. Kanad retreated a little, and her
pain ebbed. He made his mind soft. They folded against one another. She laid very still,
her mind comparing the sensation to the way two people try to snuggle in a love seat. He
pulled her mind in with his. There were constellations in his thoughts, stars that burst on
her suddenly like a squirt of lemon, the dusty smell of asteroid belts, the misty touch of
planet rings. He tried to soothe them both with these thoughts.
***
Asami woke screaming, her ears filled with wind, quick pains rippled across her
forehead and her eyes stung as if they were swelling out of their sockets. She was blind,
her vision full of burning white fire, the rim of the sun. Then the pain receded sharply.
Her hearing returned, the buzz of Cloey’s processer hummed. The air on her sweating
skin chilled her flesh. Her head felt heavy and hot, over full. Images of Kanad came to
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mind, his star glittered eyes expanded until constellations, star patterns she did not know
the names of came to mind.
Kanad? Asami thought.
Cloey’s orange rimmed blue eyes glowed in the dark, awakened by Asami’s
scream. The android’s eyes gleamed threateningly, stranger’s eyes. For the first time,
Asami felt sharp dislike for Cloey slither across her thoughts. Beneath the skin layers of
her android’s face was metal and gears, the hum of electricity. Cloey was a stranger,
with a brain that could be programmed to hate her or love her.
No. Asami blinked. She shoved Kanad’s mind away. He resisted for a moment,
pulling at her, like taffy stretching, and then he was gone.
Her mind slooshed back into place along with her feelings. Cloey was no
stranger. Her dislike dissolved.
A candle had been lit, and Cloey sat beside her. The android brushed a cold
synthetic finger over Asami’s upper lip. It came away red.
“Oh, Asami! You’re dying, aren’t you! It’s that Z.R. disease. It’s eating your
brains! I have your brains on my finger! Don’t lick your lip! That’s like eating
yourself!” Cloey attempted to shudder, but it turned into a full body vibration that rattled
the bed. She stopped shuddering and expressed her horror through her eyes instead,
widening them till they were white all around the rim. She leaned forward wiping blood
from Asami’s mouth. Asami gagged. Her mind felt widened her thoughts unable to
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form. There was a new taste in her mouth, like fresh air, the coldness of snow, and a zap
of electricity—the taste of the galaxy.
“I’m fine.” Asami croaked and licked her bloody lip.
“Uggh!” Cloey jittered, her hands streaked with blood.
“I’m not dying Cloey.”
“How do you know? Your brain is melting out your nose! How can you know
anything?” Cloey’s pitch climbed upward into a bleating whistle.
“I’m fine.” Asami scrubbed at her upper lip. “Just a bloody nose.”
Cloey clutched her new hair as if in pain, fingers pulling the ends around her ears.
“Just a bloody nose from Kanad trying to climb inside my brain with me.”
This last comment didn’t help. Cloey’s mouth hung slack so Asami could see the
backs of her pearly white teeth, and the fizzling spark of her electric voice box.
“I’m fine, he left already.”
“How do I know that?” Cloey shouted. Her face flushing with red color.
“Because if Kanad had possessed me, I wouldn’t like you so much.”
“Oh.” Cloey’s processor whirled softly.
“Now go back to sleep.” Asami leaned her flushed face into her pillow and rolled
back towards the wall before she dabbed at the blood in her nose. Why had Kanad
allowed her into his head? Was he confusing her with his mother? Was he treating her
the way all Susurri treated one another? Hopping mind to mind so easily? Sleep didn’t
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settle until much later. Instead, she lay awake, trying to remember what her body used to
feel like before the Susurri started to tamper with her mind.
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Chapter Nine
You can think yourself to death with enough negativity. Luckily, the human brain can
also unthink thoughts.
-Dr. Morgan Vasco
Doctor Vasco came for Asami himself the next morning. She didn’t feel sociable.
Her mind was still tingling and raw with the baby Susurro’s presence. The Doctor was
shorter than she remembered; the top of his clay-white scalp glowed beneath a thin layer
o f black and gray hair, his skin sallow in the pasty hall light, showing every sag and
wrinkle. He was not unlike one of the Ghost children. Not unlike Alec. Her heart tingled
with the same prickly sensation as if her chest cavity were on the verge of tears. Why
had she left Alec? Why had she thought these people could help where her own could
not?
"Good, good, no need for that tragic face dear, you’ll make yourself look peaky.”
Doctor Vasco’s neck disappeared in and out of his collar as he consulted his tablet
looking up at her and down at a list. The skin of his neck stretched against the vertical
creases on his throat, creases that reminded her of deep knife slices. Was he stitched
back together like the other Libras, or was that simply old age, times hacking away at the
skin? "You look just about through the worst of it now. Not so hollow in the face.
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Strong enough now, I think I can attempt the resuscitation." His ashy, brown spotted
hand reached out and pinched her cheek as if to test the elasticity of her skin.
She pulled her head out of reach. At the mention of Maxi her insides felt
jumbled, as if they didn’t fit in her skin quit right, as though someone had taken a melon
scoop to her organs and then tried to fit all the balls back into her shell. Could they really
bring Maxi back?
Doctor Vasco headed down the hall, his stride short and quick, his hands waving
her forwards with flicks of the wrist.
They didn’t return to his office but went up a shabby, brown stained flight of
stairs. The plastic floor had come away from the ground beneath it, giving the steps a
haphazard give at the tips. At the top of the stairs was a doorway filled with light, as if it
led to a backdoor garden.
Asami entered the light-room, drinking in the brightness. Warm yellow beams
fluttered down from the sky, filtered as if the light were shining through a thin layer of
water. The curved ceiling was aglow, a river of fluctuating gold. As her eyes adjusted,
she saw that the ceiling was full of moving, glowing liquid. Gold dust gleamed in a
sluggish current that wound back and forth across the arched ceiling. The walls gleamed
with pale yellow, and the floor was sparkling white and hard as crystal. Asami turned her
face up towards the brightness, her skin longing to soak in the warmth. She had not
remembered how much she loved light.
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Built into the walls were horizontal pods with glass lids that opened to the
brightness like a large petal arching back to wards the stem of the pod. People lay inside,
some sleeping, others sitting up and gazing upwards with peaceful, bland expressions.
Their lips curved gently, their faces smooth and soft around the eyes and mouth. A man
three times wider than Asami, with arms like thighs stood beside his pod. His upturned
face was marred with a thick rectangular metal plate that folded over his forehead and
into his hair, but his eyes were closed. His tan streaked, bolder arms had long deep white
scars, but his fingers reached up towards the golden sky as if trying to catch a flitting
butterfly.
Doctor Vasco magnetized towards a pod connected with wires, his body a
compact vessel, gently shooing nurses from his path with a single flick of the fingertips,
his feet lifting almost as soon as they touched the floor in light-footed enthusiasm.
This was the first glimpse of civilization Asami had seen from the Libras. The
room was an oasis of calm where people simply existed in communal solitude, each to his
own purpose of relaxation. She felt her shoulder muscles beginning to relax beneath the
soft waves of heat in the sunlight. Tendrils of light seemed to be massaging her neck and
bathing her face.
Then she saw Maxi sitting upright in her pod bed. Her body, which had been a
stiff, greening corpse, now breathed. There was even a flutter of a heartbeat on her now,
straightened, tan neck. Asami hadn’t really believed it was possible, to restore a human
body so fully after death. She didn’t trust her senses. She looked for the flaws. Maxi’s
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gaze fixed vacantly on Asami from within a serene face. Absent was the violent flashes
of thought behind her glossy eyelids, gone was the contemptuous curl of red stained lips.
Cleaned of dramatic expression, she looked shockingly young. But she was alive. Her
skin was smooth and glowing with health, no longer covered in blisters. Asami moved
left and then right. She tried ducking down and the tranquil brown eyes lowered with
her, demure, but fixed. She was alive, but not thinking. She was simply a body.
Looking about the room once more, Asami realized the people were not relaxing; they
were breathing, moving, skin sacks. The back of her neck prickled with unease.
“Ah! She knows you.” Doctor Vasco patted the brunette’s shining head,
scowling as Asami tried hiding behind him. He jerked loose of her digging nails. “Stop
your antics. You’re the only face her brain remembers, let her look at you. It will
stimulate her neurons.”
Asami stood partially behind Maxi who arched her neck backward at a painful
angle to keep eye contact. If it bothered her, it didn’t show on her bland face. Asami
frowned down into Maxi’s blissfully lax expression and backed up a step. Maxi swiveled
around and stared. Asami knew if their positions were reversed Maxi would take great
delight in the situation, but she could only feel discomfort at the worshipful raptness of
the other’s attention.
“Firstly, a biometric piece” The doctor pulled several images of Maxi’s face
across his tablet, including Asami in the consultation. “Which design do you think she
would like? The macroscopic robots need a point of entrance, a way I can program them,
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but it doesn't have to be ugly as so many of the ladies, and men, keep telling me.” He
smiled at Asami, his round face luminous in the dark room, white and shining like a
moon. Asami fidgeted looking between the two mild faces gazing at her expectantly.
Instead of answering she took the tablet. The metallic pieces ranged from sleek
and thin to thick and chunky. Her palms grew moist, her fingers stiff and clumsy as she
scrolled through the images positioning the tablet to block Maxi from her view. Maxi’s
face peered up above the top of the screen blinking blandly, lifting from her seated
position in the pod bed.
Asami scowled and turned sideways away from them both. She skirted across the
metallic designs. A triangle made up of more twisting triangles, the simplistic outline of
animals, a deer, a cat, a bird, a frog, some swirls that looked like a vine with a small
flowering tulip. Then there were the rough, weathered pieces, that didn’t pretend to be
anything but plates to cover over whatever lay beneath. Dag had chosen one of those.
She felt strangely criminal, imagining Maxi waking to find some permanent piece of art
inserted into her face, like a prank tattoo. Maxi would choose something bold, she
wouldn’t hide it. Asami returned to a thin blooming shape, like twisting tree branches
that would taper out from the comer of the eye—wild eyeliner, a peacock’s tail. The
screws holding it in place were lost in the design. Asami pointed to the shape.
Doctor Vasco was waiting patiently. His eyebrows raised in silent bemusement
as he took the tablet back from her.
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“What now?” Asami folded her arms to give her hands something to hold onto.
The situation still felt unreal. She had watched Maxi die. Even if the body could be
restored, even if the mind could be, the essence of Maxi, her soul, wouldn’t that be gone?
Or was there such a connection between body and spirit that they could be drawn back
together?
“Sit here my dear.” The Doctor pointed, and Asami saw there was a white chair
beside the pod bed. It curled up from the floor like a blade of curving grass. Asami sat
face to face with Maxi. Doctor Vasco gently pushed Maxi into a corpse pose, her body
compliant, her head arching back to keep Asami in her sight. Asami resisted an urge to
wave and smile as though Maxi were a child. If Maxi remembered any of this, Asami
didn’t want to give her an excuse to punch her.
The pod lid closed over Maxi, her face extinguished behind the glass as sanitation
spray filled the pod with mist. Asami felt the warmth of the ceiling kneading into her
muscles, relaxing her despite her anxiety.
A spark of red and yellow flashed in the mist, a muffled sound like chiseling rock.
The scent of burning wafted from the pod, singed hair. The clear glass filled so thickly
with smoky mist Asami could see nothing but her own face gaping back. There were
dark smudges like fingerprints under her eyes, her skin taut over her cheekbones, her
jawbone visible. She looked skeletal and sick. Ironic given that she was surrounded by
plump, glowing corpses.
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The mist receded and Maxi’s face reappeared, her eyes mercifully shut. From the
comer of her right eye, all the way to her hairline, were metallic, shimmering curls. Her
right eye looked larger than the left and a thin line of blood had leaked out around the
metal edges, crying down her cheek. The glass hissed open, folding up. Doctor Vasco
dabbed the blood trickle away with a handkerchief, humming at the back of his throat
indistinctly.
He opened a panel on the bed and drew forth two green wires, thin as thread with
rounded glass tips. The tips pulsed with purple light. He put one into each of Maxi’s
ears. Asami’s stomach flipped as the wires moved into Maxi’s ear cavity on their own
and disappeared. The doctor drew two more wispy wires and reached for Asami’s head.
“What are you doing?” Asami jerked back covering her ears.
“You are going to rouse the subject back to us.”
“How?” Asami leaned backward slightly further, the glossy edge of the chair
digging into her shoulder blades.
“Stop being so finicky, they won’t hurt you.”
“What do they do?”
“They will create a mental link between you and the patient. Once Maxi is
revived it will release you.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“It always works.”
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Asami dug her nails into her thighs feeling a tickling sensation as the doctor fed
the threads into her ears. She sat very still, fearful that movement might snap one of the
wires off inside of her. The last thing she wanted was another piece of metal floating
through her head.
“Now I want you to think about all your memories with the patient. Everything
you remember about her.”
“What’s it supposed to feel—•” Asami gasped, her head jerking. The taste of
metal filled her mouth, sticking to her tongue. Her vision spotted over with bright blobs
of purple and yellow. Her ears thudded with the rush of her blood pumping into her
brain. The smell of iron bloomed in her nose.
When the pain receded, she wanted nothing more but to throttle the doctor, and
dig her thumbs into his ears— stuff his ear with evil wires. But she was disconnected
from her body, floating in nothing.
Think o f Maxi. Doctor Vasco’s voice prodded.
Her mind shied away from the sound of splashing water, and the death scream
that had echoed across the Seaweed Farm. She fell back towards the first time she met
Maxi. She had been outside, on Earth. She remembered the grass crunching under her
crossed feet. Trees surrounded the Growth Institute, but above the border of forest,
Asami could see a shimmering sea of white buildings, and above those, a sky full of
puffy nimbus clouds. A picnic of broken bark, dry cherry blossoms and a few droplets of
morning dew captured on green grass were displayed on a stump. Cloey sat opposite her.
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The android had begun to hum lines of opera since Asami put a chip in her. Her perfect
mechanical voice soaring among the tall tree branches intoning Duettino from the
Marriage of Figaro as Asami listened to the wind moaning against the leaves, threatening
to blow their picnic away
Maxi had run up the hill towards them, racing her friend Sam to the tree, faces
aglow, pink and breathless. Sam had stopped as Maxi reached the tree first and bent to
look at Asami’s collection of plants, the race lost and forgotten.
Maxi looked glorious in victory. Her shining, long, dark hair escaped its braid to
tease around her temples, her dark eyes bright and glowing from exertion. But her mouth
turned down as Asami passed Sam a cherry blossom on a piece of bark.
“You’re messing up our race.”
“I’m tired of racing,” Sam collapsed between Asami and Cloey, his dark curls
flopping over a freckled nose as he inspected the blossoms.
“How can you have a picnic with an android? She can’t eat.” Maxi said crossly,
shaking her braid back.
“I can’t eat flowers and bark either,” Asami replied. Her cheeks flamed as Sam
smiled at her playing with the bark between his fingers, “So it’s fair.”
“That’s stupid.” Maxi kicked at the stump, spilling the carefully collected dew
onto the dry wood.
“No it’s not,” Asami’s skin burned with a less pleasant feeling in her stomach
than the one Sam had given her.
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“Androids are stupid.” Maxi taunted, her sly lips dimpling her cheeks.
She remembered the thud of pushing Maxi back against the tree, and the less
satisfying pain of tumbling down the hill, clawing and tangling in hair and limbs. The
rage as Ms. Clamps tugged them apart by the arms scolding like a blue jay. Afterward,
when Asami’s elbows ached and rough calluses had formed on her fingertips from
scrubbing the hallway floors, Ms. Clamps dismissed them with a sniff of disgust. Maxi
had grinned toothily at her. Her eyes light and dancing as she mimicked Ms. Clamps toss
of the head and curl of lip. Asami had felt a funny bubble of warmth in her chest, and
realized she liked Maxi after all. She liked the conspirator’s smile they shared. She
wasn’t sure how it had happened, but their enmity towards Ms. Clamps had given them a
commonality. She found she was grinning back.
She remembered in pieces. Maxi, walking to and from classes. She had been
smart, smarter than Asami had been, naming trees and plants, but also knowing things
outside of biology. She knew how to get outside the Growth Institute without the
teachers knowing. She came back with treasures. Bottle caps, hair dye, good smelling
dumplings, and paper wrapped cakes. Sometimes she would trade with the others for
specific things, candies that were not on their dietary list, and not just for their birthday.
Things she could buy from the android vendors. Once they all started earning credits, no
one needed her trips outside the Institute, but she had the reputation.
Maxi laughing at the cantina with the other Freezys, shooting back shots of
krupnik as they all shivered the effects of freeze away.
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Asami’s mind slipped forward, into an icy wilderness. Maxi lay in the snow, her
mouth bloody, her eyes wide with fear. The wind was still, and Asami could hear the
ragged tug of breath rasping in Maxi’s throat. The Susurri had surrounded them, and
their leader, Waheed, had held Asami on one hairy shoulder like a pet parrot, the hairs
covering his body loose and open, curious, as one of the Susurri lifted and dropped a
heavy block of ice above Maxi’s head. The head made a sharp, cracking noise, over and
over. Asami had seen Maxi die in dreamy sequences, alive, struggling, screaming, and
dying. Nothing changed except the expression in Maxi’s face as she looked up at Asami
pleadingly, angrily, confused, and finally, as though she didn’t exist, and then she would
die again.
Asami fled the images, not caring if Maxi remembered their time in Freeze. She
never wanted to think about it again. She was standing in a bright room. Heidi was
sitting in a chair holding up a strange wedge shaped chip.
“You agree then? It’s necessary?” Heidi asked.
“It will let me, have more control? Over what I dream?”
“It will eliminate the nightmares completely. More importantly, it will block out
your memories of your time in Freeze, as you find them, simply think about locking them
away.” Heidi’s hands were smooth and soft as she pressed the cold metal chip into
Maxi’s palm. Asami stumbled backwards. This wasn’t one of her memories. This was
one of Maxi’s.
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They fell forward into water. She was swimming, the water lapping at her neck.
She was Maxi, floating, dipping her head beneath the surface, spinning with the current
of the water. Something grabbed her leg and in one swift tug she was under the surface,
bubbles exploding around her, and hot pain spiking up her leg. Her lungs ached and
burned, forcing her to breathe sharp shards of water.
The connection broke.
A spark zapped between the two wires in Asami’s ears. Something was buzzing
in her skull. A hot sliver of molten lead was searing the tissue in her forehead. The
buzzing spread down her arms and legs.
Greetings Asami Five... Signal activating... One
moment, please.
No. Asami’s heartbeat pierced her chest as if each double beat were a spark of
coal trying to bum out of her. Her chip had come online.
Cancel... She thought. Cancel...
Command unknown... One moment, please...
Asami felt dizzy. The chair beneath her, her own body was disappearing. She
was disappearing.
Incoming signal...
Hello?...Hello? Who is this?
The words rolled through her mind in bold typeface. Go away... go
away...don't turn on, just go away.
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Asami?
Incoming sig-sig-signal-al-al...
Go away!
One-One moment, p-p-please...
It's me, Cloey!
One-One...
Help me...
Moment, p-p-please...
The words stuttered in her mind. Blurred, and finally, they disappeared.
Asami found she could open her eyes; her head tipped back looking into the
bright ceiling. Hot and sticky blood ran from her nose down onto the hospital tunic. A
face filled her vision, round and moon-white.
“Is she conscious?” A stiff voice asked.
“Yes, I think she is coming back around.” Doctor Vasco dabbed at her nose.
“You seem to have very feeble capillary veins.”
Asami reached for her ears, fingers digging for the thin wires. She felt her ears
slosh, the wires were gone. Her fingers came away dripping yellow liquid.
“Oh yes,” Doctor Vasco smiled sheepishly. “A teensy side effect of the
procedure. The electric currents cause your ears to overproduce a thin wax.”
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Electric currents, Asami glowered murder at the Doctor. Excessive amounts of
earwax weren’t the only thing the currents had done; they had also managed to activate
her once dormant chip.
Asami scrubbed her face with both hands feeling miserable and ugly as she dared
a glance at Maxi. Had she at least done that right? Maxi stood arms akimbo, her mouth
curling in distaste as she ran her dark gaze up and down Asami’s front. She seemed
exactly like the Maxi Asami remembered. Asami searched for the familiar spark of
anger. Maxi’s eyes were hard and shrewd; the distracting decoration on her temple
reflecting the light in the room making Asami’s sore eyes wince, but for once since the
Bad Freeze, Maxi didn’t look as though she wanted to punch someone.
“Do you feel like you?” Asami asked lamely.
“Shut up.” Maxi said.
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Chapter Ten
You only miss things when you can no longer take them for granted— like Mindy Pink
joint polish and facial cream.
-Cloey
A proper shower, with hot streams of water drumming against her scalp and sides,
was something Asami had forgotten to miss. The Libra’s version of a shower was the
worst she had ever known. She climbed into a metal cylinder in which she was
pummeled with a miserly liter worth of temped H 20 that thrashed around her stinging at
the soft flesh of her legs and arms. Air whirled round her like a dust devil, sending her
hair into frantic motion that whipped at her neck. She had learned quickly to scrub down
with soap before entering the tube, and then to fasten her eyes shut tight and hold her
breath for the minute of sudsy waterworks. The tube then turned into a vacuum of suction
that pulled the liquid from her skin, drying her out like spun lettuce.
Released from the torturous shower, Asami reluctantly donned her grubby
hospital shift and stared at herself in the tarnished metal mirror. It was a strange
reflective glass that might have been taken from the breast plate of a primitive android
and then pounded into a warped but flat slab. Her face took on a distorted wave, drained
of color by the metallic gray sheen of the metal. Her blond hair, grown out of its formal
crop beneath her ears, was tangled and teased into a stiff poof.
As she tried to detangle
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it in small clumps, it crackled around her fingers, the strands thick as wire bowing
reluctantly down around her neck once more. She stared at her forehead hard, as if
staring long enough might allow her to see beneath her skull. Her skin was dry and
slightly flaky around several pimples. Two hair thin lines ran from one pale temple to the
other. It looked normal. She wondered if the chip had misfired, maybe even shorted
out. She hoped it had. The thought of it spreading throughout her neurons disgusted her.
It would take her over if it could, like the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which
spread throughout an ant’s brain with spores, and once the ant was fully colonized, forced
the insect to attach itself on a leaf and starve to death as the fungus grew out of the head
cavity. She imagined the chip growing the same way.
A polite rap at the window on her door drew Asami’s eye. Brendan was grinning
into the rectangular window. His face exploding with good news, his eyes scrunched up
by his beaming cheeks, his wide smile fogging the glass before his teeth.
“Lucky day!” Brendan greeted Asami as he unlocked her door, his voice forceful
in its cheer. He wore his usual nurse’s tunic, the faded blue fabric freshly starched.
“Oh joy,” Asami sat on her cot.
“You will be!” Brendan surveyed her tight quarters.
She became aware of the plates stacked beside his feet at the doorway, a stray
dehydrated noodle sticking to the bottom of his shined black shoe. The room smelled
faintly acidic from the tomato sauce and musty with week old basil. Cloey’s blankets
sprawled on the floor, taking up most of the walking room, and her own plant samples, an
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ear of com, a potato root, a bud of tomato all littering her eating table/nightstand. She
knew every square inch of the cell. The fine lined crack above her cot, once invisible,
had begun to snag her gaze each night. Some nights the ceiling had seemed heavy, ready
to buckle in and crush her. The bubbles in the plastic wall along the comers of the floor
and ceiling made her wonder if water were running down the outsides of her walls, and
the condensation that built up, making the wall beside her cot sweat, seemed to confirm
there was at least a great temperature difference between the inside and outside of her
walls. The even smaller bathroom was so tight she had begun leaving the door open. It
had barely enough room for Asami to turn in a circle from sink to toilet to shower.
“Don’t you want to know?” He asked hopefully, edging into the small room.
For answer Asami picked at a callous on her foot, peeling a white layer of skin
away from her heel.
“So, good news. You’re being discharged!”
“I’m free to leave?”
“We have a room all picked out for you. Cloey has actually been decorating it;
they are all excited to meet you.”
“Meet me?” Asami remembered the fighting pit, the jeering cries outside the
battle cage, cheering her death on. She didn’t want to meet anyone here.
“No need to pack, the room supplies all belong to the hospital.”
“I’ll just, change then.” Asami scrutinized her stained hospital shift splattered
with red oily sauce stains and dirt prints of her own hands.
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“I’ll come back in a few then.” Brendan sauntered off, an annoying hiccup to his
steps.
Asami left her raggy shift on the floor. Her clay-orange training suit which had
been skin tight when she arrived now hung loose in paunchy pockets along her stomach
and thighs. Sand still clung to the thick fabric, but the familiar smell of earth and sweat
eased her.
As she ventured outside her unlocked cell, she combed her fingers through her
hair again and rubbed grit from her eyes. The only company besides Cloey she knew was
Brendan, since he had brought her food and checked her for signs of viral infection. She
didn’t know if he was a friend really, since their only contact was a routine prick on her
finger accompanied by a frown into a tablet and then the beaming, all clear, you aren’t
going to die today smile.
She scanned her cell quickly, but all that was left to bring were her tablet and
plant samples which fit easily in her supply bag.
Brendan slammed a door further up the hall with a leap backwards. He looked up
at her sheepishly, a candle clutched against his abdomen.
“Who’s in there?” Asami asked.
“Maxi,” Brendan rubbed his hair. “Doctor Vasco is quarantining her till he is
certain the Z.R. is out of her system... Do you think I could give her one of your plant
samples? Maybe she would like me more, if I, had a gift.”
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“You would just be giving her something else to throw at your head.” Asami’s
ears tingled as she listened hard; hearing muffled screaming behind the door and the
sound of something shattering.
“Right...” Brendan set the candle down by the door looking reluctant to return it.
“She is having a strange reaction to the antidote. You just keeled over. She almost tore
my roots out.” Brendan’s hand rubbed along his scalp of short hair.
“That is just Maxi.” Asami shrugged, a smile tugging at her lips because it was
like Maxi.
“You’ll be wanting to see your new quarters then.” Brendan turned on his heel,
then back again to take her bag. Asami fended him off. It was comforting to have
something to hold onto.
She looked about the halls as she trailed behind Brendan. This time she felt
relatively in her right mind compared to the drugged state she had been in when she first
walked down the hall. She tried to make a mental image of the Libra’s new compound.
There were no windows to speak of, and almost all of the hospital rooms were empty.
Brendan saw her look inside several rooms. “You won’t find many sick people
here. It is an empty ward unless it’s overflowing with accidents after a raid planet side,”
he said with a shrug. “Though we do get the occasional crazy,” he tapped his head. “The
biometric pieces don’t always work well the first time.”
Asami scowled. Doctor Vasco had failed to mention that. She thought of Maxi,
crazier than before.
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“Where will I be staying?”
“You’re in Dag’s wing. Not too many Greenies up there, but you will meet
plenty in the mass hall.”
“You will still be seeing plenty of me too. Doctor Vasco wants your help with
that baby Susurro.”
As much as she hated the thought of visiting Doctor Vasco, she was anxious to
see what had become of Kanad. He was only a baby, and he had not reached out for her
mind since she had pushed him out.
“You’ll be wanting to visit Maxi I suppose.” Brendan said.
Asami wondered if Maxi could remember what death was like.
Brendan chattered on and Asami let him take the lead once more, down the hall
and out a heavy double door right into a larger traffic filled hallway. The floor was well
worn and scuffed. It was a wide passage, enabling eight people to walk shoulder to
shoulder.
Her mind tried to make sense of the structure. She was aware that she was at the
bottom of the hospital ward which had 6 levels. Above that, Cloey had said was a second
ward no one had access to. She imagined a windowless tower, a series of stacked floors.
Somewhere in this tangle, Iki was missing. Maybe she could barter for the cat’s return.
“Is there a place you put animals?” Asami asked as she searched the crowd.
“Some of the little ones get a pet, cute little miniature hamsters and the like. But
really, animals are rare. It’s a difficult job trying to create an ecosystem.”
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The passageway thickened with people. Everyone wore uniforms of different
types. Some wore lab coats, white, blue or green. Others wore aprons, or work pants.
Asami was astonished by the mixed ages, if anything there were more aged people than
young.
Brendan ushered her to the left, joining the crowd. The hall was over twelve feet
tall, probably because it ran for several meters before it connected to an archway that
opened into a recreation floor. The ceiling was lit by dim stripes containing chemical
reactions rather than electricity.
A woman waited for them in the archway. She stood out in her dusty leather
cracked gear. She was also a foot taller than the tallest man passing by. Asami’s eyes
went first to her hair pulled back in a severe braided knot at the top of her neck. The last
time Asami had seen her, she had been dead, slung like baggage over Dag’s back. Alive
Asami couldn’t imagine anyone handling this woman the way Dag had. Her face, though
not old, was leathery from sun exposure and a piece of metal glinted under her ear. A
new metal plate had been inserted in her forehead. Asami wondered what was lost of her
when a second biometric piece was inserted. Her sharp black eyes were cold as she
watched Asami study her.
“This is Asami,” Brendan grinned gesturing between the silent women.
Geir arched an eyebrow, her mouth inflexible as stone. “Bring her things to floor
one, section C.” With that she dispensed with Brendan turning towards Asami. “Don’t
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think Dag has the time to acquaint you with life here. If you have questions ask the other
Greenies.”
Asami wasn’t sure what the woman had been told about her, but it was clear she
viewed Asami as an irritant. Asami resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It wasn’t as if she
had asked to be brought here.
“That should be mutually gratifying. I think we are equally fond of one another.”
Asami muttered.
Geir pursed her mouth, and Asami thought she caught a glint of a humor in the
woman’s face.
“Yes don’t bother with Dag.” Brendan supplied awkwardly. “You can always
ask me if you need anything.”
Geir’s face returned to bored cement.
“Thanks,” Asami said.
Brendan patted her shoulder. “I’ll see you later then.”
Geir signaled she had grown tired of the conversation by walking several steps
away before looking back. Asami was surprised how sad she was to see Brendan turn
and disappear into the crowd heading back to the hospital. He had grown familiar to her.
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It turned out that by Greenies Geir had meant other biologists living in Dag’s
ward, of which, there were only three. Two men, one who looked half plant himself in
his celery stick coat, the other was only half in the ward, spending most of his time in his
friend’s ward with a livelier group. The last was an older woman named Marcy who had
a collection of Miltonia Zorro orchids, which she called her little yellow delights.
Geir left Asami to the Greenies with a grunt.
She peered into Marcy’s room and found that it was kept purposefully damp and
hot for the flowers. Asami thought she could like this woman very much, perhaps
because she reminded her of a softer, kinder Heidi, only with puffed curly black hair.
Marcy had lost a daughter and husband to Z.R. and now, all she wanted was to grow her
orchids in peace.
Asami gathered she had joined the outcasts, the unwanted ones. Dag had a
reputation for collecting soldiers, and the refuse of scientists, vets and biologists were
tucked away out of sight on the top floor which was also the smallest. The thought
nagged at her that she was of no use to Dag, so there had to be another reason for
bringing her all the way here. He didn’t seem to be the type to hesitate over killing
someone if they were inconvenient. And she had been more than inconvenient.
Asami found her room easily. Cloey had put together a sign on the door made of
glow in the dark tubing that lined all the hallways in blue light. It featured both their
names with connective cursive. Asami was relieved to find the room was not made
entirely of plastic, but had great thick metal beams on the ceiling. A strip of blue lighting
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wound back and forth across the metal beams, and Asami suspected Cloey had added this
touch. The floor was carpeted in a thick rag rug, the tough knots giving ample cushion.
On closer inspection, Asami suspected Cloey had fashioned the rug out of well washed
discarded dishrags. The floor had a sharp smell of lemon to it. Two small beds were
pressed against the free wall, separated by a shared night stand with a half melted candle
and the remains of origami paper. Five origami swans surrounded the candle. Cloey’s
bed was easy to guess it was littered with chef aprons and skin moisturizer. Asami found
a thick metal beam above the other bed, and lined her plant sample along the edge.
Marcy offered to show Asami to the kitchens. Old as she was, Marcy took the
stairs down all six flights. Asami noticed the top flight was the dingiest, bits of grease
and dust coated the hallways. She supposed the three inmates didn’t bother to clean the
hall, as the more regimented military units bellow seemed to, for the walls were clean,
scratched with scrub brushes in some places with gray scratches. The smell alerted
Asami when they drew close, a smoky scent of burnt bread that left a bitter taste in her
mouth, the sulfuric tang of boiled cabbage and something hot, and peppery. Marcy
popped open the rusty slab door for Asami, a large rectangular room with rough plastic
tables crammed into five even rows of three. This room was enforced with metal, and
the yellow paint was bubbling on the ceiling where the stove’s steam landed.
People were scattered around the room in groups, segregated mostly by the color
of their uniform. The segregation was strange to Asami. The Growth institute mingled
everyone no matter what their profession.
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A commotion of laughter drew Asami’s eye to a comer of the leather clad
soldiers. Cortie presided as clown of the conversation. All of Cloey’s comments made
Asami watch him, to see what it was that attracted the android. She saw several other
women fighting for his attention, and while Asami was flattered when he stood and called
her name to invite her to sit by him, her better judgment told her to ignore him. She
pretended to be def and absorbed in Marcy’s conversation, which was scattered and
simple, but safe.
Asami peered behind the food counter and saw Cloey ordering people around
from her perch on a stool, shouting for vegetables and spices. There was one meal only,
vegetable soup and a chunk of cheese bread. Avoiding Cortie’s eye, Asami steered
Marcy towards a more solitary seat by the kitchen where she could watch Cloey at work.
They took their slightly warped metal trays and sat between a group of green and
blue coats.
As they ate, Marcy drew a sketch of the compound on a napkin. The crude
drawing represented the compound as built inside of two large hills beside an
underground lake. In one hill was the hospital, closest to the water was the greenhouse
and in the next hill were segmented housing wards, the kitchen and recreation lounge.
She saw movement and heard hollers and looked up to see Cortie headed over.
Inwardly she groaned. She knew trouble when she saw it, and Cortie was all sorts of
trouble. Funny enough to be popular and good looking enough with his gleaming blond
hair braided back, and his square face that two women were already glaring at Asami. He
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was the type that would get her knifed by Maxi 2 and 3 as she dubbed the glittering cold
eyes of Cortie’s female admirers.
“Hey-Sami!” Cortie shoved his tray against hers as his lumbering form kicked
the bench back to make room for his long legs, jolting two greenies where they sat.
Asami startled at the nickname which she never expected to hear so far away from
the compound. Only Alec had called her that, and only because he could not pronounce
Asami as a child. She was surprised to find the nickname hurt her now, not because it
reminded her of Sam, but because it reminded her of how she and Alec used to eat most
meals together. Asami watched Cortie settle in across from her.
“Its Asami.”
“That’s too formal, you look like a Sami,” he stretched his long legs out beneath
the table, knocking her leg with his thick leather patched boots.
“Get used to it.” Asami took an ungraceful bite of soup.
Cortie’s eyes followed the spoon to her mouth, “So, how’s it been? You seen
most of the place yet?”
Asami shrugged and wished him back to his former table with his dagger eyed
friends. His breaking segregation made her feel more conspicuous. But then, as the only
new visitor these people had ever met, she supposed that was unavoidable. She wanted
to pinch him viciously for making her an object of hate to the other women—and his
oblivion, or enjoyment of exciting such anger in his friends, made him more disagreeable.
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The other greenies and blue-coats began to glance her way, their ears tingling to overhear
what she might say.
Cortie watched her deadpan face with amusement, and what he had intended as
teasing quickly turned to embarrassment. “You know,” he leaned across the table trying
to catch her eye, “you don’t really strike me as an indoors girl.”
Asami kept her face wooden.
“Why don’t you try being a leatherback? I’d recommend you, you seem spirited
enough for a fight. Better than mucking about in this place.”
Asami couldn’t help a sharp glance at his eyes and face as she tried to read him.
He seemed sincere, his blue gaze clear with no trace flicker of humor or mocking. The
moment didn’t last long.
“I’d take you in my unit.” The suggestive sparkle returned.
“You’re a clown,” Asami dug at her vegetable soup with jabs that splashed the
broth up her spoon onto her clenched fingers.
“What’s that?” Cortie asked.
“An idiot.” Asami said around a mouthful of cheese.
“I’m serious!”
Asami leaned closer, willing her eyes to be cold. “Go away, Cort. Can I call you
Cort for short?”
“Call me anytime.”
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Asami stood, disengaging her legs from the table and shoving his tray with hers as
she leaned forward. She reminded herself that she had been kidnapped by this man, and
that despite his easy going charms, underneath he was probably as warped as Dag. Her
voice sounded hard in her ears, her teeth gritting as she spoke. “I don’t like you, and I
don’t want to see you around. The last thing I want is to be in your unit.”
“Don’t expect her to be reasonable,” Maxi 2 had approached. Her thick raw
leather hide vest showed off lean, browned and muscled arms. Silver scars ran up her
neck, but she was beautiful, her dark brown eyes reminded Asami of wet river stones.
“She’s with the Greenies,” Maxi 3 said the word as if it were a rotten piece of
lettuce she wanted off her tongue.
Asami smiled inside despite the insult, they didn’t have to like her, as long as they
left her alone.
Cortie’s earnest face slipped back into a mask like smirk as he turned to look at
Maxi 2. “I’d be terribly offended, but you see, it’s just Sami’s way, she’s prickly when
she’s scared.” He winked up at Asami.
Inwardly Asami wanted to throttle him for putting them on such intimate terms.
She could have ground marble between her teeth but instead she smiled politely,
straitening.
“You don’t know me that well.”
“OOOH!” Cloey’s whirling shriek reverberated down Asami’s spine. For the
first time she felt dread at her small friend’s approach.
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“You found my yellow man. Let’s all of us be real friends.” Cloey hugged
Asami’s waist leaning her head against Asami’s side as she looked Cortie up and down
like he was candy.
A surprised grin spread across Cortie’s face. “I would like that.” He leaned
across the table and pinched Cloey’s blue bangs. “Is this a new look?”
“Do you like it?” Cloey purred.
“Very you.”
Asami’s hackles rose as Maxi 2 looked with amused scorn at Cloey. “Don’t play
with her too roughly, androids break so easily.” The woman whispered loudly in Cortie’s
ear.
Though the barb was meant to get under Cortie’s skin, Asami saw Cloey had
understood it. The soup turned to vinegar in her stomach, her fingers clenching one
another until they ached. Cloey pushed away from Asami, her sweet smile showing too
much teeth.
“No one asked for your sad life story, but luckily no android worth having is
interested in a cheapo like you.”
“Your kind are all cheap dear.” Maxi 2 said.
“Maybe you should get your brain checked wackjob. Sounds like you died too
many times.”
Asami almost clapped her hand over Cloey’s mouth, and it took her a moment to
gain control over her wide-eyed shock as Cortie laughed openly at them both.
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“I’m sure I could use your spare parts as a quick fix.” Maxi 2 tapped the star
shaped metal design by her eye.
“I don’t really know what your problem is, but I bet it’s hard to pronounce,”
Cloey turned to Asami. “Don’t eat this slop, it’s for the masses.” She eyed Maxi 2 and 3
as she said the last bit, and shoved a bag into Asami’s hands before smiling flirtatiously
up at Cortie, “be seeing you.” With that, she flounced back to the kitchen.
“Control your pet android.” Maxi 2 smirked at Asami. “Or I’ll decorate my next
gun with her.”
“That would be wasteful.” Asami settled back down onto the bench, her heart
beating erratically in her throat. “Cloey is comprised of some of Earth’s most advanced
technology. I’m certain you have better things to do than get in fights with my
computer.”
A buzzer saved Asami from Maxi 2’s response as all the brown leather clad
groups got to their feet and headed out the door.
“See you around.” Cortie’s eyes laughed at her.
Asami wanted to say, please don’t, but for Cloey’s sake she satisfied herself with
silence.
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Chapter Eleven
Cooked tomatoes are healthier for you than raw, but they may be eaten like a fruit, as a
sauce, salsa, soup, or beverage.
-Asami (Hadano) Five
Marcy seemed to have elected herself as Asami’s guide, showing Asami to the
greenhouse. Rows and rows of plant life spanned the long, rectangular room that
stretched before them like an indoor field taken over by a jungle of plant life. Thick
stalks of com and full leafed vines of grapes suspended on metal racks filled the air in
rows of jade, lime and emerald leaves. The high, gray ceiling was reinforced with thick
metal beams, and pillars came down from the center of the hall like elephant legs.
Running beneath the rows of foliage were long troughs brimming with schools of
fish. This circulating water was also used to nourish the plant beds above. Asami was
shown how the Libras oxygenized the water. Each day remote pumps flooded the
streams with oxygen so the fish didn’t suffocate. Asami followed the fish trough,
winding its way in a long stream throughout the plant beds. Beyond the tall stalks and
vines were stacked rows of cabbages, celery, lettuce, spinach, onions, potatoes and
peppers all suspended in the air by thick metal racks. Beneath these racks, thick black
hoses wrapped like vines up the metal trellises and misted the gardens. Each section was
tended by a single greenie, sometimes being pestered by a blue-coat.
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In one streambed, hoary fish undulated against the thick, artificial current. The
muscled bodies shivered forward and back, their silver bodies sparkling with tints of
periwinkle and blue, their fins almost black. Some sort of freshwater tuna, Asami
thought. The second type of fish was a streak of pinkish red. It had a feathered white
tail, with deep pink splotches, it’s back almost translucent, its head green, with golden
eyes, and its thick muscled body fading maroon and purple. A salmon, she was told.
They looked more like small, bloody sharks to Asami.
Marcy showed her to the fertilization table. When the fish grew aggressive or too
large they were removed and taken to the kitchen for food. The leftover bits were then
crushed into a jelly that made a fishy smelling fertilizer paste.
At the far end of the hall, Asami marveled at the natural water reservoir. A triple
thick glass wall spanned the long side of the room, a window into the cavern of water.
Asami felt like she was inside of a large eyeball, the glass wall indented outward in a
smooth curve like a cornea instead of flat with the wall. Asami stood at the center like
the pupil, searching the dark depths, trying to see where the water ended and the moon
rock began. Her gaze traveled up, following light blue streaks in the moon’s stony walls.
The water was trapped beneath the moon’s outer crust, but light from the sun penetrated
through cracks in this crust, piercing through the thick earth.
Sluggish currents carried chunks of moon rock past the window. The light from
the surface looked smudged the deeper it penetrated, leaving streaks of light blue in the
crystalline water. Glowing lanterns were placed every quarter mile out into the reservoir,
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marking the floor and walls. These lights pulsed like huge fireflies. Asami wanted to
swim out into the gloom, to float in the vast endless and lifeless water body.
She
wanted to touch a part of the actual moon, beyond the plastic walls and metal supports
encasing her.
It occurred to Asami that this body of water was what kept the Libra’s alive.
Their drinking, farming, manufacturing, washing water all stemmed from this reservoir.
Asami saw workers floating like sea creatures out beyond the glass. Marcy told her they
were checking for fractures in the rock, to make sure their water was not escaping
through cracks. Asami imagined the water escaping, darting through a fissure in the rock,
sucked by the vacuum of space to be lost, and floating away out of the atmosphere.
Peering into the gloom she thought of the composition of the water, without oxygen, the
atmosphere beyond the plastic and metal barriers. She felt the thinness of the floor, a
pulpy paper, thick but fragile. She knew there had to be reinforcements underneath the
slightly squishy floor, but her mind imagined it dissolving out from under her. She could
visualize herself sinking forever.
The ground seemed to echo beneath Marcy’s approaching feet. The small woman
gave her a long green coat, the shade of mint, as well as a dark brown turtleneck and
trousers. Asami carried this bundle, her feet falling in behind Marcy’s as they wound
down the rows. Similar to the Resolute Greenhouse, sunlight had been manufactured and
the entire ceiling glowed down UV rays.
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Asami was assigned to an empty station. Each gardener had their own. Her
watering system was hooked up, and she was sent to the fertilization table to begin. The
first week Asami spent prepping the soil. She was given a bucket of fish skeletons and
skins, and shown how to mash the bones down with a mortar and pestle until Marcy
thought she knew the consistency well enough to use the faster mashing machine, which
was a great bowl that ground the fish up with a compostable soup.
Her hands stank of salmon, the smell clinging beneath her nails and in her hair.
She then mixed this fish gel and compost soup with the dry powdery shovelfuls of moon
dust. Clouds of the gray soil clung to her clothes and skin, but in the end, her soil
resembled a damp, mulch mixture. The weeks work only filled one long trough on her
metal racks.
“What will you be planting?” Marcy asked from Asami’s elbow. Her nose
smudged with a thumb streak of fish soil.
“I’d like to plant tomatoes.” Asami thought of her garden aboard the Resolute.
What she would give for a sprout of her sun gold cherry plant.
“We mainly grow beefsteak tomatoes here.”
Asami begged seeds and sprouts from a greenie who had a crop not unlike a
Cherokee purple tomato, round as an overlarge apple, with a deep red and moss green
color to it. As well as several heirloom varieties that had color ranges of yellow and
freckled green, their shapes bulbous and bumpy.
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Asami tenderly planted the seeds feeling a little more like herself. It felt like
years since she had gotten elbow deep in soil. As the days passed she willed the sprouts
to bloom, giving each frail life a little encouraging whisper. By the end of the third week
Asami overlooked her budding garden with quiet satisfaction. Her troughs were filled
with rich soils, and though there was mostly just soil to look at, she could imagine the
seeds burrowing and nestling in the folds of dirt, making soft homes. She had grown
used to the smell, the slightly musty and fishy damp dirt beneath her fingers. At times
she fancied the seeds speaking to her in earthy murmurs.
There wasn’t much to do in her free time, since Asami was not yet incorporated
into the plant research, grafting or species pollination, and she often caught herself
watching the water behind the floor to ceiling glass. Sometimes she forgot she was doing
it. The liquid had a mesmerizing effect, catching the comer of her eye with a glimmer of
ice or a speck of dirt and drawing her deeper as with molecular twinkles and gleams.
It became a quiet presence in her mind like a rustle of wind on drapes. If she
looked too far into the darkness, beyond the lit points that guided small subs towards a
launch bay above and out of sight, she would almost be afraid. But it was more like
looking up at a starry sky, knowing nothing was alive out there that could pounce down.
In her spare time Asami began to search for Iki and put off her overdue visit to
Maxi with the excuse that she needed to know more about the compound. She wound her
way through halls, making small maps of the compound on the thick paper napkin Marcy
had started. There were zones off limits to green-coats, and though Asami knew that was
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her likeliest bet at finding Iki, she focused on mapping out the places she could gain
access to. Disturbingly she found that most of the green-coats hadn’t been to half the
places in the compound. They moved routinely from their quarters to the dining hall to
the greenhouse and sometimes the recreation room when the brown squad was cleared
out. Each day Asami chose a new ward to search through, and she had narrowed in on
the animal lab, which was just down the hall from the hospital. Inside she found pens of
meat, chickens fussing at her approach. The birds were fat and brown feathered. Their
red feet scratching at the hard dusty earth as they picked uninterestedly at heavy metal
pans full of larva.
At night she tried to search for Iki with her mind. He did not respond to her, but
in her dreams she would see a woman with red hair in a dark room.
Purple shadows
obscured how big the room was but she could make out boxes, cages, stacked almost to
the ceiling, covered in sheets. The smell of damp hay and sulfuric animal feces wafted
from beneath the stained white sheets. The sounds of animals grunting and moving about
metal bars. The shriek of an angry parrot pierced her ear drum, then a sad, low monkey’s
call, like a hyperventilating man drifted from beneath the nearest cage. The redheaded
woman had wet, curling hair, but no face.
Asami kept an eye out for a redheaded woman during her searches, but there were
a surprising number of redheads working with animals. By the end of the second week,
Asami at last turned her attention back to the hospital, and Maxi, and whatever might be
kept secret above the hospital.
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She went before breakfast on the pretense of visiting Maxi, should anyone ask.
She took the stairs, in hopes of avoiding a meeting in the more popular elevator shafts.
Her calves began to bum, but she knew the sensation would pass after a few more flights,
once her muscles warmed up. The left hand doors lead to a cyborg facility, where Doctor
Vasco put together brown squads when they didn’t return in one piece. The sixth level
ended abruptly with a reinforced, windowless steel door that required a retinal and finger
print scan, and probably voice recognition. Asami glared at the door in frustration and
pressed her hands against the cold metal. It did no good to push, but it made her feel
better. As her fingers made contact she felt something from the other side of the door
stir. It wasn’t Iki, she was certain. This was a sharper, colder, angrier presence that
pricked her attention like claws scraping metal. There were Susurri behind that door, and
she didn’t know how many.
“What are you doing up here Greenie?” A sharp woman’s voice asked from
behind.
Asami froze, her whole body shoving against the locked door. She knew she
looked guilty. She took a deep breath before turning.
The voice belonged to a tall, thin faced woman with pale snake eyes. She looked
to be in her mid-fifties by the creases around her mouth and across her forehead. She
wore her hair straight, thinning her face down even more and giving her sharp
cheekbones an edge. Her arched, long nose dominated her face, but her low eyebrows
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somehow accentuated her diamond shaped black pupils. Asami knew that this was the
redhead she had been searching for, and this was the door that hid Iki.
“You’re that new Earthling.” The woman’s eyes narrowed, her pupils pulsing.
“Oh?” Asami spotted a thin red scratch on the woman’s hand, just beneath her
blue sleeve.
“Did Dag send you up here?”
“No?”
“What are you looking for? Does he think a new face will get him access?”
Asami’s tongue felt stiff in her mouth, “No, I, you are confusing me with... Did
you say Dag wants to know what is up here?”
“Get out.” She advanced, her frame suddenly seemed powerful as she leaned into
Asami’s face, her voice controlled but tight, giving her words a slow, punching rhythm.
Her long pale fingers whitening on her clipboard. “Tell Dag it will be ready when I say
it is ready. The next spy I catch up here will lose her tongue.” She reached a hand for
Asami’s jaw. Asami scrambled around towards the stairwell.
“Narcissa?” A man’s panting voice called. “Open the door for me, will you?”
The man’s head topped the stairway; his half shaved dirty blond hair slicked
sideways, a shrouded cage beneath both beefed arms. Asami ran down the steps,
knocking the cage. Inside she heard the soft squeaking of rats.
****
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Brendan let Asami into Maxi’s cell. The room was thick with the smell of sweat.
Asami propped the door open with her boot, watching the heavy metal crush the fabric.
The room was Spartan. The blankets folded in squares at the end of the bed with a pillow
on top, as though Maxi had not touched them. The thick white candles showed no sign of
being burnt. Maxi’s long body took up the floor space. Her frame unnervingly still as she
lay in a one armed plank, sweat beading on her brow
“Did you know, I have had more visits from your android than from you?” Maxi
did not glance up but switched arms. “Which isn’t actually difficult, seeing as this is the
first time you have bothered to come around.”
Asami pulled out her limp napkin fold, looking over the crude design of the
building.
“Cloey brought me meals when I was in here.”
“Dinner every night.” Maxi grunted, rolling smoothly to her feet. The hospital
garment looked flimsy on her well toned frame.
“I had nothing to show you, and now I do.” Asami held out the napkin.
Maxi’s hand shot out, but instead of grabbing the napkin her fingers latched round
Asami’s forearm. Asami felt a spark jolt through her brain as Maxi tugged her into a
hug. It was a brief grip, but it left her mind momentarily blank.
“Shut your gape.” Maxi snapped turning away with the napkin. “You saved my
life. You let me die first, but you came through in the end. I won’t forget that.” Maxi
squatted lightly on the balls of her feet and spread the napkins out on the floor.
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Was this a result of dying? Asami thought dully. She had quarreled with Maxi
for so long, it felt unnatural to experience a moment of vulnerability from the other
woman. Asami sat down gingerly, her skin tingling all over with the foreign feeling of
camaraderie. It somehow felt fragile, this truce between them, like a veil that could be
blown away with the softest of exhales. She found herself questioning what to say next,
wanting to prolong the moment of suspended surprise, and afraid that if she spoke, her
words might destroy this new generosity Maxi had shown.
Maxi knocked Asami’s arm with the back of her hand. “Where is your head
spacewalker? Did you really fight one of the Susurri in a ring or was Cloey just spinning
stories?”
“But you’re being nice to me.” Asami blurted.
“You’re giving me the creeps.” Maxi smacked Asami’s arm again. “Now tell me
what this is, I can’t read idiot code.”
“It’s a map of the compound,” Asami explained the layout pointing towards the
crude rectangular shape atop the outline of the hospital. “I haven’t gotten past these
doors, but I think that is where the Susurri are being kept, and Iki.”
“I think we should play off both sides. Cloey has filled me in on the social
groupings. There seems to be two camps, Dag and the scientists. Dag knows you too
well already, but I could be a leatherback easily enough. They have access to everything.
You work on finding this vaccine. If the Libra’s are right, we could have a serious
epidemic planet-side.”
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“You think we will have to steal it.”
“Obviously,” Maxi paced the short room. “Maybe they are worried the virus will
mutate. We are genetically different enough, a new strain could develop that might wipe
the Libras out.”
“That explains why they won’t make contact, but not why they wouldn’t want us
all treated before a real outbreak occurs.” It felt good talking it out with someone who
thought the same way she did.
“Unless we have something they want. Something Heidi would have to be
desperate to give up for a cure.”
“The Resolute?”
“The Resolute, our medicines, our new technology, either way, if we die, they get
it.”
“We should all be working together.”
“I think we need to fight.”
“What?”
“Me and you.” Maxi’s eyes gleamed, her hands fisted in excitement.
“You want to fight me?” Asami wondered if Maxi really had gone crazy.
“It will get their attention.”
“That’s not really necessary.”
“It’s the easiest way to get a spot with the leatherbacks.”
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“Why are they called that? Everyone else is named a color, greenies or bluecoats.”
“From what Cloey says, the leatherbacks all have aggressive tendencies.”
“They will put you in the pit.” Asmai gathered her napkins off the floor, her heart
sinking as Maxi hopped from foot to foot like an old-school boxer. A part of her had
hoped they would work together in the greenhouse, plot their escape side by side. “They
don’t care about dying; it doesn’t mean anything to them. They might kill you, over and
over. Just like...”
“Freeze was different. In this arena I’ll have a chance. They won’t have my
mind. Besides, they seem to have had no problem killing you in the arena, and you aren’t
even a leatherback. We need to play this smart.”
“Maybe you feel... fine—”
“I feel better than fine Asami. I feel like every cell in my body is singing.”
“Ok, great, for now, but what about the fifth time, the tenth time. How many
times can your brain die before you lose something? How many times before you lose
too much, before you become more machine than you?”
“Then you better figure out how to get that antidote fast.” Maxi jabbed at her.
“Besides, I’ll need the training. The leatherbacks fight planet-side too you know. Our
military could use any tricks the Libra’s have figured out.”
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“You want to save them, even after Hiedi..
Asami trailed off hugging herself. It
was a stupid question. Despite everything, she wanted to save them too. “Just, leave my
eyes alone. I need to be able to see to find the cure.”
“Sure.” Maxi was still jabbing air as Asami let herself out, hopping on one leg as
she pulled her smashed boot on.
****
Asami didn’t recognize her at first. Maxi moved with the same stalking prowl
and stiff posture as the others. She had been given a green coat but had tied it round her
waist, walking around in her brown turtleneck. Her long brown hair had been pulled up
into a high ponytail, showing off the metal design on her forehead. Asami felt aware of
her the moment she walked down the aisle, flipping her thick hair. Their eyes connected
and Asami tensed wondering how Maxi planned to impress a leatherback in the
greenhouse, but then she saw Cortie and another leatherback escorting Maxi, well more
like jogging after her.
Maxi stopped when their eyes met.
“Sami!” Cortie called, “I thought I would just show your friend down here.”
Maxi shoved the metal garden rack, shaking the plants.
Asami glared. There was no need to involve the tomatoes.
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“You think you’ve done me a great favor bringing me back?” Maxi shouted, her
eyes bright. Asami braced herself.
“You let me die,” Maxi shoved Asami’s shoulders.
Asami remembered things happening a little differently than the way Maxi was
putting it.
“Now, now, ladies.” Corite tried to insert himself between them. Maxi wrenched
his thumb back, closing the distance between Asami and herself once more.
Asami searched for an argument, “It’s not my fault you got yourself killed using
that new chip in your head.”
Maxi staggered for a moment. “Who told you about the chip?”
Asami felt the momentum of their argument slip. Maybe Maxi was embarrassed
by the chip? Asami hadn’t meant to pry.
Maxi’s anger seemed real this time, almost palpable in the air, like a heat wave.
“Heidi included you in her bat witted experiment?” Something sharper flickered inside
of Maxi’s gaze, Asami could see it in her eyes, something crazed, helpless and full of
rage.
“No, of course not,” Asami stumbled. “I saw it when the doctor asked if you
should be brought back to life. And I remembered... when I was bringing you back, you
were thinking about the chip blocking out bad memories...”
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Maxi launched herself at Asami, teeth bared. Asami didn’t know if they were
playing around anymore as they rolled across the floor into the metal carts and Asami felt
the empty plant troughs topple across them, a sharp pain in her temple.
Cortie pulled Maxi off, picking her up by the waist. He was gifted with a solid
crunching elbow to his nose before dropping her. Asami felt the air socked out of her as
Maxi fell into her stomach. Dag arrived in time to witness Cortie’s fall into a cabbage
bed. He crossed his thick arms and watched, his face showing no sign he intended to
interfere.
Asami shuddered blinking blood from her eye and wondered if it were her
imagination that Dag was smiling slightly around the eyes. Cortie took a second grab at
Maxi, as if he were wrestling with a slippery snake, he held the woman at arm’s length,
yelping as she raked her claw sharpened nails down his arms.
Dag spoke as Asami got to her feet, bringing Maxi to a halt. Asami wasn’t sure
she had seen Maxi stop for anyone before. Even if she did toss Cortie into Asami’s
tomato rack, the plant trough toppling over on him before she finished. Asami looked at
her spilled soil, and young green sprouts snapped under the weight of dirt. Three weeks
of her work overturned in a moments brawl.
“We don’t have the time or resources for this tantrum.” Dag barked.
Maxi turned on him, her hot fury cooling.
“Let’s just calm down ladies,” Cortie called from the floor, the trough laid across
his chest, his arms extending.
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“Yes, let’s not upset our fine feminine feelings.” Maxi raised a cut eyebrow.
Dag glanced at Cortie’s bleeding nose and smiled at Maxi. His teeth gleamed.
“If you want to fight, you fight to kill. Let me show you pet. This is your target.” His
arm snaked forward, fingers crushing Asami’s throat. “You should be able to crush it in
one blow, or you’re no use to me.” He looked into Asami’s eyes and she wondered if he
planned to compress her windpipe just to demonstrate. She could not prevent her breath
from wheezing, but she glared back at him with as much disgust as she could throw into a
glare. Dag’s fingers tightened.
“Come on Dag.” Cortie looked frightened, his hands shoving at the heavy trough.
When Dag did not let go or tighten his grip, Asami grasped his pinky and began
to force it back threatening to snap it off unless he release her. If he was going to kill her,
she wanted it done with. The edges of her vision had begun to fog.
She thought she saw a spark of humor instead of pain enter Dag’s eye as he
released her. He spoke to Maxi.
“If you are so eager for a fight kitten, we will draft you over. See that she is
outfitted Cortie. And get back to work, I shouldn’t have to track you down.” Dag turned
away, his huge frame brushing the plants that towered over Asami’s head. Maxi looked
frozen, her eyes never leaving Dag’s back.
“Save me from this... thing... would you?” Cortie grunted beneath Asami’s
trough. His fingers drummed across the metal.
172
Asami tore her eyes away from Dag’s back. She rubbed her throat, certain her
vocal cords were bruised.
“Big strong thing like you needs help?” Asami whispered hoarsely.
“Well if I lift it sweet, I’ll send your precious tomatoes rolling.” He dabbed at his
bloody lip.
Asami pulled as he pushed it off his chest, staggering to right the trough without
spilling more soil. She wondered how such a mild mannered jokester got recruited to
second in command when he balked at crushing cabbages, or ruining her tomatoes. Maxi
looked white in the face, her bravado of anger replaced by something Asami might call
fear. They had more things to talk through than Asami had thought.