Dove Arising (4 page)

I might not like all the Committee’s choices, but they’ve ensured the Lunar Bases’ survival on the ecologically hostile Moon. Tomfoolery resulting in leaks and broken filters—or an epidemic of illness—could kill off a whole base. They watch us to prevent catastrophes. We keep them in power, and they keep us alive—a good enough bargain for me.

“Dad!” Umbriel’s fingers grip the edge of the table. “Couldn’t you wait to ask? They just took Ms. Mira half an hour ago—”

“Who’s ‘they’?” Atlas asks.

“Corporal Beaters,” Cygnus says. “I don’t know why they didn’t send privates.”

Ariel and Atlas shudder.

“That’s awful,” Ariel says. “And strange. You’d think corporals had more important things to do. Maybe the notification will explain—it should come within the next thirty minutes.” He frowns too, highlighting his resemblance to his twin. Unlike Umbriel, though, Ariel has pretty features and a slight frame, traits that make him seem younger. His skin is paler from staying out of the sun; even his lips are redder, like the peel of a Gala apple, and his nose rises to a graceful point. While Umbriel stares at people intensely, sometimes accusingly, Ariel gazes at them, his huge eyes closed halfway.

Anka draws her knees to her chest. “I don’t want to know.”

“Ay! Enough sadness. Eat, you kids.” Caeli takes her place on the last empty stool. “I spent all morning mashing potato.”

As I squish a bite of salad with my tongue, a vibration rattles through my left hand; it travels down my spine, giving me the sensation that someone has dropped ice down the back of my robes. Anka’s and Cygnus’s shoulders jump to their ears. They’ve also received the notification.

“Someone else read it,” says Anka.

“Grits, my eyes must be coding wrong to my brain.” Cygnus holds his handscreen a decimeter from his eyes, blinking. “It’s from . . . from Shelter.”

Atlas groans.

I open the message on my handscreen, reading silently as Cygnus reads aloud.

“CONDOLENCES FOR MIRA THETA’S MEDICAL CONDITION. REPORT TO THE SHELTER DEPARTMENT WITHIN TWELVE HOURS..2GIVEN THE DEFICIT IN THE FAMILY’S JOINT ACCOUNT AND PROJECTED MEDICAL EXPENSES, THIS IS THE OPTIMAL AND ONLY COURSE OF ACTION.”

Translation: unless my family finds another way to support ourselves, we must give up our home and live in sordid Shelter, dwelling among vermin and disease and crime, and subsisting off the Committee’s meager handouts. To stay in Theta 808, we’d have to scrape together all the money to cover our dues to the Committee, rent, and Mom’s Medical bills in twenty days. It’s impossible. Part-time Agricultural assistant is probably the most lucrative job someone my age could hope for, and still the pay is not enough. Working in a high-paying Department, like Chemistry or Aerospace Engineering, is out of the question. It requires Specialization training, which I won’t complete until I’m twenty-three and have spent my required years in the Militia.

We must obey Shelter’s directive. Cygnus knows it—and judging from her continued weeping, Anka knows it too.

“They should live with us!” Umbriel blurts. “Please, Mom?”

Caeli clears her throat. “My darling, we don’t have space for three more. As it is, there’s barely room for our family. . . . They can still come over for dinner, though.”

“They can’t if they’re in that pit of a department,” says Umbriel. “Shelter residents need permits to leave.”

“Umbriel, if we had the resources, you know we’d keep everyone out of there,” says Atlas.

“Anything would be better than
Shelter
.” Umbriel grimaces before turning back to me. “Can’t you work more hours in Agriculture?”

Anka shakes her head, examining a wad of cucumber on her fork, and pulls a sour face.

“Not enough for Medical bills and rent and stuff. That’s with low estimates.” Cygnus pokes his handscreen, his elbows on the table. One foot is tucked under his behind; the other dangles from the stool. He’s not bobbing back and forth, which means he’s concentrating hard. “We’ve got 1,293 Sputniks. Food costs us four hundred per month; rent and Committee dues add up to a thousand. The projected cost of Mom’s treatment, medication and all, is a little over fifteen hundred. They’re going to send us an official message tomorrow, but I got hold of the numbers a few minutes ago.”

He’s still working on his hacking skills, but in a few years I doubt any of the bases’ servers will be safe. Sometimes I wonder who is the greater liability between Umbriel and Cygnus. Umbriel steals food, while Cygnus steals information.

“I could work in Sanitation full-time,” Cygnus offers. “Another four hundred Sputniks per month.”

“You’re funny,” Umbriel says. “You’d have to be older and more . . . coordinated.”

My brother will have to wait until he’s fifteen to meet the age requirement for Sanitation employment, and I’m glad. I grimace at the thought of him scurrying through dank tunnels under the base, surfacing only to disinfect public facilities and collect waste and turn it into compost. It’s tiring, thankless labor that would detrimentally affect his health.

“Ha-ha. I’m overqualified in breaking and entering. They’ll never know it’s me.” Cygnus strokes a beard that isn’t there. Despite all the joking, he really thinks he can fake his way in. I love him so much when he’s being unreasonable.

Atlas scoffs, drumming the table with the knuckles of both hands. He deals with many cases of underage workers; they go to Penitentiary for three or four days and then return to Primary with documentation of the crime defacing their handscreen profiles. “Well.” Cygnus stands, not bothering to smooth his crinkled robes. “I give up.”

“Already?” says Anka.

“I can’t think of anything, except illegal stuff.”

Funny he should say that—because I can’t either.

“You don’t think about much else,” Atlas says.

Yesterday my siblings and I were normal, hardworking students; today we’re destitute, on the verge of becoming outlaws or Committee dependents. If Cygnus and Anka weren’t at my side, I’d allow myself a few tears and swear words. If we don’t check into Shelter within the next eleven hours and fifty-one minutes, the Militia will haul us there. There’s a chance Beaters will appear at our door again, one I’m not willing to take.

Cygnus sighs, turning to Anka. “So let’s check out Shelter.”

“Okay,” says my sister. “Ms. Caeli, thanks for dinner.”

As Anka and I prepare to leave, Umbriel jumps from his seat. “Hold up! I’ll come with you.”

“No!” Caeli rises, knocking over her stool. “Haven’t I told you never to go near that place? Please. Let Phaet take care of her own family.”

“I don’t think he makes a distinction between hers and ours,” Ariel says.

Caeli looks from one son to the other, bewildered. Although Umbriel often disobeys her, it’s rarely with Ariel’s support.

“We’ll be fine,” Umbriel tells her. “Maybe Shelter’s not as bad as people say.”

He’s wrong. It’s worse.

3

SMOKE RESIDUE AND OTHER GRIME HAVE stained Shelter’s ceiling a mottled brown, but the filth is nothing compared to the stench rising from open excretory pots and bodies that haven’t entered a shower chamber in eons. The floor is lower in some places than others, and yellowish liquid sits in the depressions—not flowing, not even rippling. It’s sitting, just like the people—if one can call them that—around the cavernous space.

They cover their flesh with scraps of robes that have lost their color and display brown stains like those on the walls. Nearby, two people scuffle for a dilapidated cot, even though it looks hard as petrified wood and about as comfortable as the floor; one surrenders, his nose pouring blood. Other residents huddle together and shiver, cocooned in raggedy blankets. Shelter’s as chilly as a Culinary Department refrigerator; the Committee sends this place just enough heat to keep its inhabitants alive.

When the dinner buzzer goes off, able-bodied residents—60 percent or so—scramble to line up at an enormous black tub in the center of the dome to be served brown vegetables. A girl about my age shrinks from the groping hands of the man behind her, coiling around the malnourished baby in her arms. Poor thing has an oversized head and matchsticks for a body.

Shelter workers ladle stringy food into people’s hands. Without utensils, the Shelter residents must eat like Earthbound beasts. Beetles stand by, using glass truncheons to strike those who reach into the tub for more. Often, ignoring the pain, the victims claw food out of their neighbors’ hands.

Most people slouch onward. Younger ones cluster in circles to share pipes and inhale wispy black smoke. Dumb pleasure suffuses their faces. The Committee declared a ban on depressant drugs decades ago, but in Shelter they haven’t enforced it. Artificial satisfaction keeps these addicts from causing more dangerous kinds of trouble.

On the far right side of the dome, Militia soldiers surround a transparent quarantine tent for the ill, shoving new additions in with the butts of their laser blasters. The people inside lie in restless sleep, punctuated by frequent shudders and the occasional moan.

Anka and I shelter our faces with our sleeves.

“I want to go home,” mutters my sister. Umbriel, Cygnus, and I refrain from pointing out that within the next few hours, this place will
be
home.

In spite of what I’ve heard about Shelter before, I’m shocked the Committee allows people to live in total degradation. The Shelter Department should care for people without the means to care for themselves, but these residents are just in a holding area, waiting for death.
Do people know how horrible things are here?
If they did, would they be upset or keep ignoring what’s going on?

Ripples of light roll through the crowd as the residents’ handscreens simultaneously receive an official message. Most people don’t bother to lift their arms. I peek at the handscreen of the man before me, whose blood vessels, visible through translucent flesh, loom dark against the artificial pigments comprising the message.

REMAIN SEATED AS MEDICS QUARANTINE DISEASED INDIVIDUALS.

“Phaet—we always knew that living here meant getting dirty,” Umbriel whispers. “Didn’t know it’d mean seeing Meds and Beetles all the time.”

As if on cue, a herd of Medics strides through the Shelter dome’s back entrance. “If you have the streptococcus infection, please come forward,” says an older Medic with a lazy eye, his voice amplified through the speakers on the residents’ handscreens. “We know who has a fever and who doesn’t. Don’t make us come find you.”

Groaning and spluttering, several lumps on the floor find their feet and stagger to the tent. Soldiers point them to empty spaces on the ground. Some avoid physical contact, while others use the butts of their guns to knock the Shelter residents into place. The Medics roll up their new patients’ dirty sleeves and inject antibiotics. Drug production and administration aren’t cheap, but I know why the Committee sends workers to treat Shelter residents and soldiers to keep them caged. It’s more efficient than taking each individual to Medical—he or she would be unable to pay the bill, anyway—and it prevents the outrage that would result if everyone in the dome got sick.

“Hey.” Umbriel tugs my arm. “Beetle’s coming over.”

I stand straighter as a young soldier approaches us. Her jacket sports the white circular private insignia, and her visor is pushed up so that her deep-set eyes, dreary gray like the lunar landscape, are visible. They’re not cruel eyes, just tired ones. A hollow surrounds each, likely resulting from strain and lack of sleep. She must be assigned to regular duty in Shelter, a job that’s mentally rather than physically taxing.

Her chest heaves with an exasperated sigh. “You checking in?”

“Still deciding,” Cygnus lies. There’s no decision to make—if we don’t move in now, we’ll be forced to return within a few hours.

Something tugs the ends of my hair, gentle but insistent.

“Shoo!” barks the private at whatever’s behind me. “Blast, Belinda, I’ll have your daddy tie you to his wrist if you keep on . . .”

I turn around. A little girl steps back, tucking her hands under her chin. Moments later, she sneezes into them. She could be anybody’s child, fresh from playing in dirt—muck masks the original color of her skin and the precise proportions of her features.

“Her handscreen profile says that her grandmother died last year,” the private explains. “Says she’ll touch anyone that looks like her.”

Umbriel makes a grab for my arm, but I evade it and squat to get a better look at Belinda. Her smile, her movements—they’re quick, bright, and
normal
, like Anka’s when she was that age. I wonder how long they’ll remain that way, how much time Belinda has before numbness becomes routine and joy a hazy memory.

Belinda draws her index finger from my right nostril to my chin, where I’ll have a frown line like Mom’s in thirty years or so. “Nothing there!” Her voice is a hoarse whisper.

This isn’t the first time a child has puzzled over my gray hair and smooth face. I smile, and creases appear.

“Found one!” Belinda rasps.

“Good for you!” says Anka. She’s probably glad that there’s someone around who can look up to her.