“You’re back!”
“Of course I am,” Nono said.
“What did we get?”
Namono took the white relief package and pressed it into her daughter’s hands. With a smile that was like complicity, she leaned close. “Why don’t you go find out, and then come tell me?”
Nami grinned back and loped off to the kitchen as if the water recyclers and fast-grown oats were a brilliant present. The girl’s enthusiasm was vast and partly sincere. The other part was to show her mothers that she was all right, that they didn’t need to worry for her. So much of their strength—all their strengths—grew from trying to protect each other. She didn’t know if that made it better or worse.
In the bedroom, Anna lay on her cushions. A thick volume of Tolstoy rested beside her, its spine bent by being reread. War and Peace. Her complexion was grayish and drawn. Nono sat beside her carefully, putting her hand on the exposed skin of her wife’s right thigh just above where her knee had been crushed. The skin didn’t feel hot anymore, and it wasn’t stretched drum-tight. Those had to be good signs.
“The sky was blue today,” Nono said. “There may be stars out tonight.”
Anna smiled her Russian smile, the one her wife’s genes had also given Nami. “That’s good, then. Improvement.”
“God knows there’s room for it,” Namono said, regretting the discouragement in her voice even as she spoke. She tried to soften it by taking Anna’s hand. “You’re looking better too.”
“No fever today,” Anna said.
“None?”
“Well, only a little.”
“Many guests?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light. After Anna’s injury, her parishioners had made such a fuss, bringing by tokens and offers of support until it was impossible for Anna to rest. Namono had put her foot down and sent them away. Anna had allowed it mostly, she thought, because it also kept her flock from giving away the supplies they couldn’t afford to do without.
“Amiri came by,” Anna said.
“Did he? And what did my cousin want?”
“We’re having a prayer circle tomorrow. Only about a dozen people. Nami helped clean the front room for it. I know I should have asked you first, but…”
Anna nodded at her distended, swollen leg as if her inability to stand at the pulpit was the worst thing that had happened to her. And maybe it was.
“If you’re strong enough,” Namono said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you. Again. Always.”
“You’re good to me, Nono.” Then, softly so that Nami couldn’t hear them, “There was an alert while you were out.”
Namono’s heart went cold. “Where’s it going to hit.”
“It won’t. They got it. But…”
The silence carried it. But there had been another one. Another rock thrown down the gravity well toward the fragile remnants of the Earth.
“I didn’t tell Nami,” Anna said, as if protecting their child from the fear was another sin that required forgiveness.
“It’s all right,” Namono said. “I will if we need to.”
“How is Gino?”
I forgot floated at the back of Namono’s throat, but she couldn’t speak the lie. To herself, maybe, but Anna’s clear eyes forbade it. “I’m going there next.”
“It’s important,” Anna said.
“I know. It’s just that I’m so tired—”
“That’s why it’s important,” Anna said. “When the crisis comes, we all pull together naturally. It’s easy then. It’s when things drag on too long that we have to make the effort. We need to make sure everyone sees we’re all in this together.”
Unless another rock came and the Navy didn’t catch it in time. Unless the hydroponics collapsed under the strain and they all went hungry. Unless the water recyclers failed. Unless a thousand different things happened, any one of which meant death.
But even that wouldn’t be failure for Anna. Not as long as they were all good and kind to each other. If they helped carry each other gently into the grave, Anna would feel she was following her calling. Perhaps she was right.
“Of course,” Namono said. “I just wanted to bring the supplies back to you first.”
Nami rushed in a moment later, a water recycler in either hand. “Look! Another glorious week of drinking cleaned-up piss and filthy rainwater!” she said with a grin, and it struck Namono for the millionth time what a perfect distillation of her mothers their daughter could be.
The rest of the package was oatmeal pucks ready to be cooked, packets of something that claimed in Chinese and Hindi to be chicken stroganoff, and a handful of pills. Vitamins for all of them. Painkillers for Anna. So that was something.
Namono sat with her wife, holding her hand until Anna’s eyelids began to droop and her cheeks took on the softness that spoke of coming sleep. Through the window, the last of the twilight glowed red, fading to gray. Anna’s body relaxed a degree. The tightness in her shoulders released. The furrows in her brow smoothed. Anna didn’t complain, but the pain of her injury and the stress of being suddenly crippled had mixed with the fear they all shared. It was a pleasure to watch it all fall away, if only for a moment. Anna was always a handsome woman, but when she slept, she was beautiful.
Nono waited until her wife’s breath was deep and regular before she rose from the bedside. She was almost to the door when Anna spoke, her voice rusty with sleep.
“Don’t forget Gino.”
“Going there now,” Nono said softly, and Anna’s breath went back to its deep sleep-slow tide.
“Can I come too?” Nami asked as Nono went back to their street door. “The terminals are down again, and there’s nothing to do here.”
Nono considered It’s too dangerous out there and Your mother might need you, but her daughter’s eyes were so hopeful. “Yes, but put your shoes on.”
The walk back to Gino’s was a dance in shadows. Enough sunlight had struck the emergency lights’ solar panels that half the houses they passed were glowing a little from within. Not much more than a candle’s brightness, but more than there had been. The city itself was still black. No streetlights, no glow in the skyscrapers, and only a few bright points along the sinuous length of the arcology to the south.
Namono had the sudden, powerful memory of being younger than her own daughter was now and going up to Luna for the first time. The utter brilliance of the stars and the starkly beautiful Milky Way. Even with the dust grit still in the high air above them, there were more stars out now than when the light pollution of the city had drowned them. The moon shone: a crescent of silver cupping a webwork of gold. She took her daughter’s hand.
The girl’s fingers seemed so thick, so solid compared to what they had once been. She was growing up. Not their little baby anymore. There had been so many plans for her university and traveling together. All of them gone now. The world they’d thought they were raising her in had vanished. She felt a twinge of guilt about that, as if there were something that she could have done to stop all this from happening. As if it were somehow her fault.
In the deepening darkness, there were voices, though not so many as there had been. Before, there had been some nightlife in the quarter. Pubs and street performers and the hard, rattling music recently come into fashion that clattered out into the street like someone spilling bricks. Now people slept when the darkness came and rose with the light. She caught the smell of something cooking. Strange how even boiled oats could come to mean comfort. She hoped that Old Gino had gone to the van, or that one of Anna’s parishioners had gone for him. Otherwise Anna would insist that he take part of their supplies, and Namono would let her.