It’s me, not them, I reminded myself, and scattered food to the crickets. Untangled fine red worms from soil and separated them to new bins in the garden module. Inflated cryoballoons and monitored weather patterns in the south. But I watched fewer videos, then quit entirely, and eventually the transmissions stopped coming. We’d always been moving on, I told myself, gaining distance over time until we faded from each other’s view. If we’d even been looking toward each other to start.
Barry and I reach the lookout and telecommunications tower on the summit of the hill. The main dish for the mine hangs at an odd angle, and must have been knocked off target by the storm. That it hasn’t righted itself will be an automation issue, and as soon as we’ve caught our breath from the hike we’ll check that the system has begun self-repair. Barry leans against the wall that rings the lookout.
From our vantage point, Habitat’s domed exterior shines orange and silver in the haze. The greenhouses, connected to the central galley by junctions and corridors, spread from it like the start of something — a web of mould, or the blind taproots of the soilless plants in aeroponics. Past the modules, but only about half a kilometre south, there’s a new river where the hydrocarbon storage barrels should be. Sometime over the last couple months, while Barry and I hunkered under Habitat’s shielding, the Megastorm peeled the land. Mud slid by us like it was nothing — like we were nothing — and took everything we’d scraped together. That river, it could have taken us, too. Such a close call.
But if I’m honest, what isn’t? Suddenly I’m worried about sinkholes, about a trip and a chaotic skid down the hill, a cracked face-plate in our Wearables, and all the other unpredictable 拉屎. How can I take a step without risking everything — myself, Barry, family? Those jobs — the welder jobs that Rinella pushed me to get — I wish I’d taken one now.
“Remember losing sight of Earth?” I ask.
Barry grabs my hands. “Nina.” Both our Wearables are coated in red soot, none of the blessings or charms visible. “Whatever you’re kicking yourself over—”
“Okay.” I raise a hand. “Yield.”
But I can’t. I can’t let it go, not truly. I still see Gran, or, I remember her, and I can’t stop.
“I have to sit.” Gran at our Earth launch, her light cotton dress flattened against her knees by the wind, the three dogs on the leash lying like lions on the dirt patch beyond the orange plastic barrier fence. Barry and I — as we carted to the shuttle that sunny morning I stood, punched a fist into the blue air and held it, trying to catch her eye.
It’s hard to breathe. Barry kneels in front of me on a patch of brown rocks, smooth like river stone or cobbles, half-embedded in the wet sand. Not sand, really; organic soot, hydrocarbon polymers that clump and rain to the surface year after year.
“You gonna tell me what was in your transmission?” he asks.
“I’ll be fine,” I say, knowing he’s worried. And, seated in the mud with my head between my knees, I will be. Of course I will. But—
Gran throwing that dishcloth in the sink, her expression as I listed my reasons, wrote her off as useless — convinced myself I’d made it. The apartment. Merven and Rinella. Those luminous, sunlit dogs. That tiny life.
THE WHITE
(A NOVELLA)
I
What is worse than rubbing bag balm onto chaffed udders — suddenly worse than home and chores at home — is that right at this instant on the bus to school the other kids keep two seats back from her. These rural kids of which she is now fabulously one. These losers who, when they boarded, she was desperate to do any, seriously any after-school activity with — community service, even detention — these assholes hold their mittens next to their mouths and their mouths to each other’s ears and spread dirt on her. Even after a full year of sucking up to these jerks — these idiots she called her friends until now — they scan her head, run their eyes over the left side of her scalp where a patch of hair is cropped down to a blonde inch, and know — with her father in the town’s drunk tank three times this summer, of course they know — that her father pulled her out of bed in the middle of last night and shaved half her head.
The bus lurches to a stop in the parking lot. She sits with her eyes closed in the funk of wet winter-wear, vinyl seats, and exhaust. The other students leave first. Let them. She waits until the bus empties, then stomps down the high, wet stairs, dragging her empty pack through the snow, not toward the school, but back to the highway. There’s no way she’s spending another day in that tiny human bullpen where a “clarinet” might as well be an exotic farm tool, and where the newbie teacher herds them all out to tour farms where they live and not a kid pipes up because, well, field trip. The bell jangles behind her. The thought of class with those traitors — she could puke.
At the highway she pulls off a glove and rubs the skin under her glasses between her cheekbone and eye. Her eye sockets are soft and puffed. She straightens her glasses then thumbs a passing car. When the car doesn’t stop, she jerks her hand down.
Her friends. Another car passes with a wet hiss. Those bullshits. She kicks a lump of snow off the shoulder of the road onto the highway toward the disappearing vehicle. “Those bull-fucks,” she yells. She kicks a second lump of hard-packed snow onto the lane. Her friends deserve something more violently gross than names, though. She’ll eat a rock. And right before she swallows the rock, she will stick a pin through her tongue. Or worse: pick up a red-brown tampon from the field at lunch, swing it round her head by the string, and let it fly. She rubs her thumb across her fist. Her head is freezing — colder than her ungloved hand.
She blows on her fingers and creates a damp warmth that will soon be a more miserable cold than before. She presses her fingertips to the side of her head, gently, slowly, as if reaching to pet a strange dog. Across the highway and along the valley basin the grey river, buoyant with broken slabs of ice, flows quietly. Naked aspen, mingled with mountain ash and their orange, ice-crusted berries, stand pencilled along the near bank. The road too is grey, the sky the colour of a coffee filter rinsed and dried for reuse. She hawks a loogie, wipes a thread of spit from her lip with the back of her hand, then wipes her hand on her coat. The snow she’s kicked is strewn across both lanes of the highway. It would be chancy for a car to dodge all of them. She pulls her glove back on, walks to the centre line, and kicks the lumps off the highway.
The neighbour’s rusted blue hatchback finally pulls over, spitting salty slush onto the shoulder. Melanie steps into the snow to give it room. Axel’s driving, Kendra in the front beside him with her camera, and in the backseat, this boy about fourteen, her age, slides to the middle and crams his side against a tower of deep, grey trays, the trays used to bus tables in cafeterias. The trays are loaded with baby birds and are piled, alternating width to length, to within an inch of the roof. In the rear, the plastic containers are stacked double-wide and padded around the base with old towels — even Axel’s driving won’t shake them. She gets in the car. There’s the smell from the trays, and this boy in a black kilt whose hip bone or belt — hard to tell — jabs into her side. He’s blushing, this kid, or wearing makeup, or was recently slapped. Looking at the boy — who the hell wears a kilt? — and knowing Axel, all these options seem valid. No way she’ll ask. No need to start a conversation that will force her to explain why she’s not in class, what she’s doing hitchhiking, and why half her hair is gone.