My Sister Melacha

God I miss Earth. I should never have come out here. Cienda Rendell turned her elegantly painted face to the shuttle window to stare at the endless black of space outside. Her slender fingers dug lacquered nails into the delicate lace ruffles of her gown. A newsfax sheet lay forgotten in the seat next to her: it reported Belter gunfights, robberies, and murders as casually as an Earth fax sheet reported the weather.

After years of studying and struggling to get admitted to the University of the Belt, she wished now that she had stayed at home. There were adequate genetics departments in any number of Earthside universities she could have chosen instead. To reach one of them, it was not necessary to float through the debris of the asteroid belt in a rattletrap vessel whose pilot could not or would not put the gravity at a comfortable setting, and whose passengers, themselves unspeakably scruffy by the fashion standards of Earth, reacted to Cienda as to a freak.

On the journey from Earth to Mars the food and drink and company had been good, the shuttle sleek and streamlined inside and out, and the trip had seemed a charming adventure. But all the other Terrans had stayed on Mars, leaving Cienda, the only continuing passenger, to transfer alone to this sour-smelling wreck full of Martians and Belters. All of them wore handguns. None of them, not even the women, wore dresses. None of them painted their faces, or styled their hair attractively, or lacquered their nails. The adventure didn't seem nearly so charming anymore.

She should have been prepared for this. She had read Melacha Rendell's published accounts of her adventures, in which she implied that the people of the asteroid belt shared her own high opinion of herself as risk-taker, law-breaker, outlaw queen. But Cienda had not believed that before she left Earth. How could even Colonials admire an unrepentant criminal, a mercenary, a braggart?

Now that she had seen them, she knew that was just the sort of person these savages would admire. And they had confirmed it, time after time, whenever their barbaric officials had cause to examine Cienda's papers. The invariable response to finding Melacha's name there was awe and idolatry for "the Skyrider," mixed with amused contempt for the Earther woman who claimed to be her sister.

Cienda hadn't seen Melacha in twenty years, and wouldn't have put her name on the application papers if a Belter relative or sponsor hadn't been a requirement for admission to the University. But the name had stood her in good stead: she knew she would have had more trouble with those hostile officials if she had not carried, with Melacha's name, the implication of the Skyrider's protection. It irritated her to have to feel grateful toward Melacha.

And now it seemed they were about to meet, sooner than Cienda had planned. She had told no one but University officials that she was coming, but someone must have told Melacha. Cienda stared tensely through tinted glassteel at the tumbling asteroid they were approaching, and at the gleaming needle-nosed shuttle that was preceding hers toward the light of the landing bay there. That, she had been told, was Defiance, Melacha's shuttle. She would reach the University Stone before them.

A series of impractical ideas for delaying the meeting crossed Cienda's mind during the landing, but in the end she simply shouldered her carry-on bag and walked stiffly down the ramp with the other passengers. The landing bay stank of burned malite, an acrid odor that stung Cienda's eyes and throat. The overhead lights were dazzling after the shuttle's dim lighting. Somewhere on the far side of the landing bay an electric motor whined shrilly, stopped, and whined again.

Melacha waited at the foot of the ramp, a gaunt warrior with pale, watchful eyes. She was even scruffier than most of the shuttle's passengers. As Cienda hesitated beside her, she said, "You must be Cienda." Her voice was as harsh as her face, like steel on granite, sudden and ugly. One of Cienda's fellow passengers said something unintelligible in passing. Melacha looked at him, scowling, and he hurried away.

Cienda shifted the strap of her shoulder bag uncomfortably and smoothed the ruffles of her skirt, painfully aware that the light was wrong for her makeup. "And you're Melacha," she said, studying Melacha for some sign of the older sister she had adored, and seeing only a stranger. "You're not much like your holos. I expected--"

"Someone taller," said Melacha. "I know."

"Actually, I thought you'd be shorter," said Cienda, suddenly cross. "Look, is there a point to this? I've had a long trip. I'd like to go to my quarters now."

"You must want to get out of those, um, clothes."

"Not really. But I would like to be alone."

Melacha, who had half turned to lead Cienda to the housing area, paused and turned back, her face expressionless, her pale eyes oddly shuttered, as though a light had gone out. "You used my name to get here."

Cienda shrugged, her own expression guarded. "Does that mean I have to pretend to be friends with you now that I'm here?"

Melacha blinked. For a frozen moment she stood perfectly still, her body poised on the edge of arrested motion, her eyes unreadable. Cienda braced herself, frail and defiant. She knew she could not win a fist-fight with Melacha. She would not stoop to try. But neither would she cower before the threat of violence.

"I'm not going to hit you," said Melacha. Her voice was flat, her expression oddly wooden, as though to conceal some powerful emotion.

"I understood hitting to be your customary response to most situations," said Cienda.

"This isn't most situations," said Melacha. "To answer your question, no, you don't have to pretend to be friends with me. But you do owe me an explanation, if we're not friends."

"Oh, for God's sake," said Cienda. "Figure it out!"

"I don't play guessing games. Come on. People are staring at you. We can talk in your quarters."

"I have nothing to say to you." But Melacha had turned away, and a furtive glance around showed Cienda that people were indeed staring. The landing bay was nearly deserted, but the people who were there were all watching her and Melacha. One of the women laughed shortly, an oddly brutal sound, and one of the men made a suggestive gesture for Cienda's benefit. Blushing furiously, she turned quickly to follow Melacha.

The University was a maze of chambers hollowed out of a huge asteroid's interior, with no coherent design that Cienda could see, and not even the smallest effort made at adornment. The corridors were grim rock tunnels, their only decoration ugly freefall handholds and the bright atomic lights that were set at intervals into the walls. Doors to individual rooms off the corridors were solid steel slabs that could obviously double as air-tight hatches in emergency.

Cienda shuddered at that thought. She had never been off-Earth before, never considered the problems and complexities of living in space. She had been so intent on getting here that the thought of what it would be like to be here had simply never crossed her mind. Now that she was here, the rage that had driven her was supplanted by a sudden sense of futility and loss. Having come in search of a laughing ten year-old, she had found a sad-eyed woman, a stranger. There was nothing left between the two of them but time.

"This is students' territory," said Melacha. "Your chamber is over here." She opened one of the heavy steel doors and stood aside to let Cienda in.

"Howcome you're here?" asked Cienda, pausing. "I thought some stranger would show me around."

Melacha's mouth twisted. "I labored under a misapprehension. I thought it logical to assume you'd like to be welcomed by a relative."

"I think you always did that." Cienda stepped past her sister into the room.

"Did what?" Melacha followed her in and closed the door behind them.

"Made tactless and selfish assumptions that you imagined were logical." The room stank of damp rock and human sweat. It was sparsely furnished and uniformly ugly, like every other place Cienda had seen since leaving Earth. But at least the lighting was dimmer here, more flattering than that outside. She put her bag on the bed, a utilitarian rectangle of padding supported by steel drawers.

"You're playing games again," said Melacha. Her tone was neutral, as though she were merely mentioning some course requirement or announcing a meal.

Cienda wanted time to think, to adjust, to come to terms with the sense of desolation that robbed her of impetus. She swallowed unexpected tears and said coldly, regally, "I beg your pardon?"

"That's all right, I'm not offended," said Melacha. There was a look in her eyes like laughter, but it was distant and superior, more mockery than amusement.

"Oh, God." Cienda pushed aside unbidden images of seaside sunsets, the hush and bustle of spring rain on richly perfumed lilac bushes, the lucent blue of cloudless summer skies. "Melacha, thank you very much for showing me my room. I appreciate it. But now I need to be alone."

Melacha nodded slowly, watching her. "I'm tempted to take you at your word, and go," she said. "It would serve you right. And I have hell of better things to do than to try to help an ungratefully little Earther doll who doesn't even know how ignorant she is."

"Fine," said Cienda. "Go."

"If you were anybody else, I would."

"Don't do me any favors."

"I've already done you the biggest favor I can," said Melacha. "I made sure you were seen with me. Now, no matter how much of an ass you are, people will know that if they mess with you they'll answer to me."

"Big deal."

"Yes," Melacha said simply. "It is."

"Okay, I'm everso grateful. You've been wonderfully kind. Now will you leave?" A deep and distant rumble, felt as much as heard, made Cienda stare in sudden alarm. "What was that?" Imagination provided visions of shattered walls, burst viewports, failed force screens, sudden death.

Melacha listened intently for a moment, lost interest, and shrugged. "Not my rock: I'm not familiar with the background noises." She drew a packet of papers from her tunic pocket. "You'll want these. Course descriptions, enrollment forms, computer codes, your University Credit card, and a map of the rock. You okay? You look sick."

"I'm scared, damn you!"

"Of what?" asked Melacha, genuinely confused.

"Of that noise just now," said Cienda, her voice rising. "Of living in a stinky little rock bubble in the middle of empty space, of all the things that could happen, of Belter savages, of dying!" She choked off the tumble of words before they quite turned into a scream.

"Oh." Melacha nodded, unimpressed. "Sure. Now, what else? Oh, right. Do you own a handgun?"

"Of course not."

"Then take mine." She unfastened its holster from her hip. "And you'll want some sensible clothes. I don't suppose you brought any. There's a -- "

"I brought clothes," said Cienda, roused from her fear by irritation. "And I don't want your filthy weapon. Melacha, this is so typical! You don't even know who you're talking to. I'm not like you, can't you see that? I'm a decent, law-abiding human being-- "

Infuriatingly, Melacha nodded, smiling. "Unlike me," she said encouragingly.

"Yes, unlike you!" Cienda paused, disconcerted by the lack of opposition.

After a moment Melacha said mildly, "So you're going to wear ruffles and lace and low necklines, and instead of a handgun you'll carry a fan."

"As a matter of fact, yes."

Melacha looked at her curiously. "Did you see how the guys in the landing bay looked at you?"

"Yes. Like a bunch of savages. So? Is that my fault? Did I personally without help from anyone rob all Belters of culture and decency? Is that what you're trying to say?"

Melacha smiled faintly, a look pregnant with older-sister wisdom. "What I'm trying to say is that you're dressed like a whore," she said reasonably. "Nobody else out here dresses like a porcelain doll."

There was a metal chair against the desk. Cienda rolled it away from the wall, turned it to face Melacha, and gathered up her skirts to sit in it. "You cannot think I'm going to wear clothes like yours!" The chair had arms. Her skirts billowed up over them, frothy and fine, when she sat.

Melacha looked unaccountably weary, all of a sudden, like a warrior at the end of a long and losing campaign. "Maybe not." She sat on the edge of the bed, completely at ease, and gazed impassively at Cienda's tense and resentful face. "It's been a long time. We really don't know each other anymore." She looked thoughtfully at the holstered handgun she held. "So you mean to go on dressing like a piece of crockery? You want to be set apart?"

"Don't you? Isn't that what your stupid Skyrider heroics are all about?"

Melacha looked at her in genuine surprise. "The Skyrider's just a nickname," she said. "And the 'heroics,' as you call them, are the way I make my living. I don't ask to be set apart, I ask to be paid."

It was Cienda's turn to smile in knowledgeable superiority. "Melacha, you know perfectly well how everybody out here thinks of you. And you can't convince me you don't want hero worship, because I know you do."

"That's not--"

"My sister, the Queen of the Cosmos," said Cienda, pushing her advantage. "And you claim you're not asking to be set apart?"

"So that's it," said Melacha.

Confused, Cienda stared. Her advantage was gone, just like that, and she didn't know why. "What's it? What are you talking about?"

"The Queen of the Cosmos," said Melacha, the invulnerable older sister once more. "You're jealous." She shook her head in apparent amazement.

"Jealous!" said Cienda.

"You're still competing for attention." The pale eyes glittered in that gaunt, shadowed face. "I thought you'd have outgrown that by now."

"Well, my God, if I haven't, small blame!" said Cienda. "You have no idea what it's like growing up as your sister."

"Neither have you," said Melacha, rising to strap her weapon back on. "You haven't done it yet."

"And anyway," Cienda said incoherently, rising too, "How dare you-- "

"I dare a lot of things." When she lifted her gaze to meet Cienda's, there were ghosts swimming in the shadows of Melacha's eyes. "It's easy."

"But to accuse me of being jealous of you! My God, how could I be? What's to be jealous of? I scarcely know you!"

Something that was not a smile pulled at the corners of Melacha's mouth. "You don't know me at all."

"And what I do know, I don't like!"

"I'd noticed."

"What was that?" Another distant rumble shook the room, followed by an odd, staticky sound, as of live electrical wires touching and pulling apart again in an uneven rhythm.

This time Melacha didn't dismiss the noises so readily. She said, "I don't know," and for one brief second her face had in it something of that wide-eyed, white-faced courage Cienda remembered from when they were children. Then her eyes narrowed, and the child was gone. She was again the battle-weary soldier who had awaited Cienda's arrival at the foot of the boarding ramp. "Probably nothing," said the Skyrider. "Stay here. I'll look into it." She moved soundlessly to the door and was gone before Cienda could verbalize a response.

The power went out while Cienda was alone. The resultant impenetrable darkness seemed almost tangible, as though the air around her had gone thick and difficult to breathe. Another rumble shook the rock floor under her. It seemed nearer than the others, almost outside her door. She stood blind and breathless, braced against the unstable desk chair, afraid to move, mindlessly waiting to die. Nothing happened. Her eyes ached with the strain of staring into absolute, unbroken black. Her throat hurt with the effort not to cry.

The atomic lights in the corridor would still be on, but she had not yet gathered courage enough to make her way to the door when the lights in her room came on again. They were only at half-power, but after the darkness even that seemed dazzling. She stumbled gratefully to the bed and collapsed against it, watching the door. Melacha had pulled it tight shut behind her and twirled the handle that sealed it against a loss of atmosphere outside. If anyone tried to get in, Cienda would see the handle turn. She could hide, or defend herself.

What if there was a vacuum out there? What if those rumbles had signalled a break somewhere in the protective rock that kept the University safe from the endless, airless void of space?

Then Melacha was dead, and if that door were opened, Cienda would be dead too. She rose and went slowly to the door, her body stiff and awkward. To her relief there was a readout strip next to the door handle and activated by the seal, that said there was atmosphere outside in the corridor. She pressed her ear cautiously against the cold steel, trying to hear some sound from beyond.

There was none. No rumbles or staticky discharge, no distant hum of shuttle engines from the landing bay, nothing. No sounds at all. Not even passersby laughing or talking. But surely that was all right; Cienda was early for the semester, and had been told the University would be all but deserted for several days. If she opened the door and made her way back to the landing bay she would find people laughing and talking and going calmly about their business. There had been something wrong with the lights for a little while, that was all. Now everything was fine again.

But where was Melacha?

Biting her lip, Cienda turned the door handle very, very slowly, till the mechanism clicked and she felt the door move under her hands. Then, still more slowly, she pulled it open far enough to peer down the corridor past the edge of the thick steel under her hands.

Not twenty feet away in the direction of the landing bay, the corridor ended in a tumbled heap of rubble. Where she and Melacha had walked less than an hour ago, there was now a solid wall of broken rock and dust and torn wiring. Above it, there was a gap of perhaps two feet between the top of the rubble and the place where the ceiling had been. Above that, black with shadows and thick, waxy smoke, was a deep new hole in the rock.

Cienda yanked the door open to look down the corridor in the other direction. It stretched straight away from the rubble into the distance, swimming with smoky shadows, but unblocked as far as she could see. Bewildered and badly frightened, she looked back at the rubble. Dust was still drifting down onto it, and gritty little showers of sand, from the gaping hole overhead. The silence was so intense that Cienda could hear pebbles settling, and the grating sound of a rock shifting against its neighbors somewhere in the heap. She might have been the only person left alive on the whole asteroid.

Rocks shifted in the shadows against the far wall. Cienda glanced that way in time to see a dust-colored apparition rise up out of the rubble: a creature formed of shadows. A golem of stone. A dead thing come to life, trying to take human form, but crippled, twisted, alien. She stifled a scream and backed away, horror-numbed fingers trying frantically to catch and close the door.

The thing looked up at her, its eyes burning like coals in the dust-gray, featureless face. It stopped struggling. A mouth appeared, visible only as a gleaming row of teeth displayed in a demonic grin. "Oh, Cienda," it said mildly. "Help me, can't you? My leg's caught."

"Melacha?" Cienda swallowed hard: her voice was a thin, startled wail. "Is that you?"

That demonic grin again, brief and terrifying. "You were expecting maybe God?" asked the Skyrider. "Come on, we don't have much time." She was lying on her back, propped up on her elbows, looking up at the hole in the ceiling.

"Time? Before what?" asked Cienda, standing still.

"Come here," said Cienda's older sister.

She moved, stiff-legged and trembling. "What happened? What should I do? Why don't you get up?" Cienda could barely see her in the dust-laden shadows. "What happened?"

"Shut up." The Skyrider's face was pale under the dust. She closed her eyes, opened them again, and hauled herself to a seated position in one swift, painful motion.

"What do you want me to do?" Cienda asked meekly. "What's wrong?"

The Skyrider scowled at her so fiercely she took a step backward instinctively. "It's okay," Melacha said quickly. "Cici, it's okay. But you've got to help me. Don't be afraid, okay? I need you."

Cienda saw then why Melacha didn't get up. She must have been almost directly under the section of ceiling that fell. She was so thickly coated with dust and small debris that it was difficult at first glance to see where the rocks ended and she began. But rocks don't bleed.

"It's not as bad as it looks, Cici," Melacha said gently. "Look, I got one leg free. It's not so bad."

Cienda stared at the freed leg. "It's all bloody. Is it broken?"

The Skyrider shrugged. "I can't tell yet. It hurts," she admitted. "But the main thing is, I can't get my other leg out from under these damn rocks." She eyed Cienda dubiously. "Can you help me shift them?"

Cienda glanced briefly at the rocks and shook her head in a fierce and frantic negative. "No. I can't. No." Her voice sounded like a frightened child's.

The Skyrider closed her eyes again, hard. After a long moment she opened them, looked blindly at Cienda, and turned away, her face resigned. Unable to reach the top of the pile of rocks that trapped her, she began working grimly to free one she could reach.

"Stop, don't," said Cienda, grabbing her arms.

"Damn you!" The Skyrider lurched at her, a sudden mass of flailing arms and murderous fists. "If you won't help me then at least for God's sake get out of my way!" But hurt and trapped as she was, she was no match even for Cienda's frail grasp.

When Cienda was sure the fight was gone out of her, she released her sister's arms and fell back against the wall, choking on smoke and dust and fear. "Don't, Melacha," she said feebly.

"Don't what, damn you?" But the curse carried no conviction; the Skyrider's voice was weak and unsteady, thin with exhaustion.

Website copyright © 1993-2000 by Melisa Michaels. Reproduction and distribution specifically prohibited. All rights reserved. Melisa Michaels is the author of the science fiction novels Skirmish, First Battle, Last War, Pirate Prince, Floater Factor, and Far Harbor, the fantasy novels Cold Iron and Sister to the Rain, and the mystery novel Through the Eyes of the Dead.