Dove Arising (6 page)

Ariel shrugs off our discomfort. “I only hope this one”—he pokes Umbriel in the ribs—“won’t up and join Militia just because you did, Phaet. He’d steal something dumb in his first week.”

Disobedience in the Militia means immediate dishonorable discharge and permanent pariah status. Consigned to society’s waste bin, Umbriel would have nowhere to go but Shelter.

Cringing, Umbriel dusts off his hands; not even Ariel knows about our secret signal. Umbriel needs to talk to me later, and I’m not looking forward to it.

“What are you two plotting now?” Ariel asks. “Listen, Phaet. If you enlist, you won’t have anyone to talk to—I mean, no one else understands this sign language you guys use. Won’t you wish Umbriel was there? And over here, he’s going to miss you like he’d miss sunshine.”

“We’ll
both
miss you,” Umbriel says.

“Sorry,” I tell him. “But my mind’s made up.”

“You can’t do this to us!” Umbriel exclaims.

“Or to yourself,” adds Ariel.

“I can, though.” As long as I have a chance at success in Militia, a chance at seeing the twins again after it’s over, I won’t surrender my family to dirt and disease. “I will.”

4

THE EXAMINATION ROOM SMELLS LIKE bleach and ethyl alcohol.

“Phaet Theta,” the tall twentysomething man, Medic Canopus Epsilon, reads off his handscreen. He scrolls through my stats, making assumptions about me based on my birth date, apartment number, IQ, bank balance, parental occupations, et cetera. When he presumably gets to my disciplinary history—my only misdemeanor is stargazing with Umbriel at the greenhouses after hours, long ago—he lets out a choppy laugh. “I hope you’re not that lazy anymore!”

When I don’t laugh or smile, he returns to official business, looking put off by my silence. “Fifteen years of age. Why are you joining Militia so young?”

Shrug
.

Canopus raises a perfectly groomed yellow eyebrow, the color of one of Saturn’s rings; his Epsilon robes are the same shade. The white light and white walls of his office match his skin. “Well, let’s see if you’re fit to serve. Looks good so far, except for the hair.”

“Genetic,” I explain.

Mom’s grandmother, long gone now, was completely gray before she turned thirty, though Mom still has hair as black as the outer reaches of space. My great-grandma was born on Earth, in a place called China, which she left to study in the United States. During the petroleum embargo, she fled into the sky with the rest of the Lunar Bases’ founders. If she hadn’t left, she would have suffered through cataclysmic flooding, economic turmoil, and even civil war. She helped design the irrigation system for Agriculture. Mom says I would have liked her, that if she hadn’t been so old, and me so young, we would have gotten along. “Maybe she came back through you,” Mom said.

Canopus pats the examination chair. “Well, have a seat and make yourself comfortable.”

I do. I feel the cold glass backing through my robes and shiver as Canopus fastens buckles around my wrists and ankles. The chair springs into action, measuring my weight and then stretching out into a cot of sorts to take my height. When it suspends me upside down to test my inner ear fluid balance, I fight to keep nausea at bay.

A painful time later, Canopus recites my results. “Average height for a fifteen-year-old female, weight below regulation. Blood composition, heart rate, blood pressure, internal organ function, eyesight, hearing, sensitivity, all normal. Muscle mass percentage relatively high.”

Pride tugs at the corners of my mouth, and Canopus smiles back. Lifting sacks of compost, hacking at wayward tree limbs with a knife, and crawling between dense crops, all while avoiding the spray nozzles in Agriculture’s ceiling, require more exertion and coordination than people imagine. My strength will serve me well in training, as much of my competition hasn’t done physical labor outside of standard conditioning classes in Primary.

“Bones of slightly porous consistency. Take vitamin D tablets during training, okay?” Canopus leans in and whispers: “Listen here—according to your body size and composition, and taking the workouts into account, you need to eat a little over two thousand, two hundred kilocalories a day to maintain your weight. But I’m going to program in four hundred extra. It’ll help.”

“Thanks,” I whisper, genuinely grateful. Maybe I can put on a few kilograms during training.

Raising his voice back to normal, Canopus finishes, “You’re all clear.”

I offer him the back of my left hand. He presses his thumb to my handscreen, waiting for it to register his fingerprint, until
CLEARED FOR MILITIA
appears in green letters.

“Next!” he calls.

As I exit Canopus’s office, an enormous boy with a bulbous forehead saunters in, looks my small frame up and down, and shoots me a quick smile. I return it, happy that I’ve gotten a pleasant, if not sympathetic, reaction from another member of my trainee class. As Canopus bustles about, gathering equipment, the boy uses the sweat from his palms to slick back curls the color of pecan shells. I laugh quietly—is he
preening
for a medical examination?

Umbriel is waiting in the lobby of the Defense Department’s Medical quarters. It’s a testament to the magnitude of the Militia that they get their own on-site hospital. “All good?”

Nod.

Although his face distorts with disappointment, he recovers quickly. “That’s great. You show them what you’ve got on Wednesday.”

Every two months, eighteen-year-olds fresh out of Primary start training in a group. The training lasts eight weeks, until the trainees are sorted into their respective units. Each base has its own Militia, but together we are known as the Lunar Forces (I wonder if the physics pun was intended). The need to unite hardly ever arises; Militias individually ward off stray attacks from Earthbound cities, collect intelligence, and police the citizenry.

The last time the Forces acted together was thirty years ago, when the Earthbound superpowers attacked Base I, resulting in the Battle of Peary.

That was when the then-Committee instituted a temporary “emergency rule” that has lasted to this day. They say they’re too busy to schedule elections.

Both my parents fought in the Battle of Peary, driving off the Earthbound for good. Mom rarely speaks of the experience, except to whisper, “What a pity,” when she thinks her children aren’t listening.

Umbriel and I wander out of Defense and into one of the wider pedestrian hallways. Everyone keeps to their right, so traffic is smooth.

“Don’t do this,” Umbriel repeats for the forty-third time this week. He’s agitated, so he strides quickly. I have to jog to keep up. “It’s not too late to drop out. Cygnus checked the reward money for each Militia rank: you’d have to get seventh or higher to make over fifteen hundred Sputniks in prize money. And that would only cover your mom’s treatment. While we’re waiting for that, four hundred a month in stipends won’t even cover your rent.”

We reach the entrance to the Education Department, and I drag Umbriel inside. Sensing our body heat, the automatic portal opens upward for us. As soon as it closes, I grab his wrists. They’re so big in my hands.

“Umbriel, stop.”

“Stop what?” He tickles my palm, but I’m in no mood to laugh.

“Stop talking. I’ll make the top seven.”

“But you’re younger, and smaller, and, er, weaker—”

I tap my right temple with a forefinger.

Most people in our three-hundred-member Primary Level Nine class only know my name because Ariel or I finish first in nearly every subject. Electromagnetism, Human Biology, Calculus, Language Composition . . . Lunar History is one of my two weak areas. It consists of tedious retellings of scientific developments, and Earth Studies is no better—dull scrutiny of the unfortunate beings we left in chaos a century ago.

Because the Earthbound are so disorganized compared to us, that last subject is a particular pain. Earth has too many micro-civilizations to count, each with different languages, governments, and parts-per-million toxicity readings. Although the wild ecology of the planet fascinates me—how does life relate to other life without human interference?—I couldn’t care less about the people. They can’t keep track of themselves; logically, I can’t either. Small wonder Ariel, whose frontal lobe processes the feelings and motivations of countless individuals with ease, always beats me at Earth Studies.

The entryway of Education is dark—it’s late, 22:00. To maintain our bodies’ circadian rhythms during the 352-hour lunar diurnal cycle, all public Departments and main hallways have their lights turned off for ten hours a day to mimic nighttime.

“Look up.” Umbriel’s arm presses me to his side.

Through the small circular window above, I glimpse hints of constellations. Gemini, the twins, glows especially bright. Unwelcome emotion bubbles from my chest up into my throat. I try to withdraw to a thoughtless space inside my head, as Mom once tried to teach me, and ignore this bodily contact and my unwelcome future in Militia.

“I won’t see you tomorrow, because I have late hours at the greenhouse. And your day off isn’t for another month.” He steps away, shoves his left hand into his roomy pants pocket, and lowers his voice to a whisper. “So . . . here goes.”

Umbriel pulls a short stalk of something green and red from his pocket. It’s a rose, one of the most expensive plants in the greenhouses because it serves no other purpose than decoration. He must have used all his tricks to smuggle it out.

I don’t understand why he brought me a flower instead of the usual pear or handful of strawberries. It’ll wilt soon, and I can’t eat it.

Then the anxiety hits. Did someone see him filch the flower?
Is anyone listening through our handscreens, or observing us through security pods, objects the size of a big toe that hover soundlessly in the air?

“Phaet . . . I’ve—I’ve wanted to know something for eons. We’ve been friends since—since we were born, right? I’ve needed you for school stuff, and you’ve needed
me
for people stuff. . . .”

It’s true. After Dad died, I despaired of fielding sympathy, retreated inside myself, and let Umbriel deal with everyone on my behalf. I’d once been talkative, but I soon realized that words wasted my breath. Our arrangement worked so well that when girls in seventh-year Primary mocked my hair and boys yanked it on dares, Umbriel teased them back—and in severe cases, made their belongings spontaneously disappear. Soon they didn’t dare come within a meter of me.

“. . . and now things are going to be harder for both of us. So will you—will you accept this?”

I offer a cautious nod, understanding that his gift has sentimental rather than practical value. What that value is, I’m not sure.

He places the flower into my hand. One of the tiny thorns catches my thumb—Bioengineering hasn’t gotten rid of them yet. A miniature red orb rises on my fingertip, and I figure it’s payback for Umbriel stealing and killing the rose in the first place.

He sighs my name in relief. A chin digs into my forehead; the smell of unripe fruit enters my nostrils. One of Umbriel’s hands cradles my neck, while the other tugs at the small of my back. Something in the air has warped, and I don’t like it. I’ll deal with Umbriel when—if—I get out of Militia alive.

“Sorry,” I splutter, sounding like the apologetic boy from Medical who abducted Mom. I extract myself from Umbriel’s arms and turn back to the entrance, not caring whether I’ve vexed him. Since Mom left last week, I hardly care about anything.

Umbriel walks me home, all the way to my white cylinder room. When he’s out of sight, my fingers uncoil from the short rose stem. As the flower falls to my desk, another thorn scratches my palm.

5

I HOLD MY SIBLINGS TIGHT, ONE IN EACH arm. Anka can’t seem to grab enough of me, while Cygnus squirms, his wiry arm hanging over my shoulder. Since he turned ten, Mom has had to ask him to hug me. He’s squeamish when he thinks things are “corny” or “girly.”

In contrast, Anka cries freely, pounding her fists against my back in sadness or anger—maybe both.

Cygnus holds the tears in like me. “I’ll make sure Anka gets to class all right, and I won’t play too many sim-games, and if anything gets weird, I’ll run over to Umbriel or Caeli like you told me. . . .”