The Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun
By Paula R. Stiles
12 March 2007
Part 1 of 2
People will tell you I stole that little girl. They'll say, "That screwy Tam out on Dragon 9 Station, he stole that baby." But I'll tell you, as God is my witness, I didn't. I found her in the disposal. And everybody this side of the Cluster knows—what's left in the disposal is for anybody who comes along to have.
I was going hand-over-hand down the mainline just above the donut-hole of the station when I heard the cry. It's dark down there. Lights go out and nobody bothers to fix them. It doesn't matter to anybody rich. The tourists, they never come down that far; they stay out where there's station centripetal force that feels like gravity, feels like ground. Me, I was born inside a tin can with vacuum death a meter away the other side of a slab of metal and never lived anywhere else, so who cares about the ground?
That third shift, my ears were still ringing with starstatic, my eyes still filled with stardust. It had coated my helmet all the way out to Kip's ship on his mooring line with my supplies and back to the station for nine hours. The starlight blasted even through my filter. There's a hell of a lot of dust inside Red Dragon Cluster, and even more starlight.
So I was a little distracted when I heard the cry. It wasn't loud, sure not as loud as you'd expect in a kid. But it attracted me to the right-hand disposal, all the same. I headed over there, not too sure what I'd find. When I gave the lid a good yank, it came free.
The creature inside scrambled to get as far away from me as it could. When I reached inside, it bit me. I pulled back, spitting out a few nasty curses I only meant in that moment, almost letting the whole thing snap shut. As I did, I caught a pair of eyes in a head a little too big for its body. At first, I thought she couldn't have been more than a toddler. Then, I looked her over more closely—no, she was older than that, more nimble.
Definitely older and filthy to boot. "Well, you look young enough you might not be damaged goods just yet." Then I felt a pang of guilt. They hadn't found me until I was, what, four? What did that make me? I reached in a little slower. "I won't hurt you, monkey, but in about two hours, they're gonna dump everything in there into a big furnace. You'd better come."
She shook her head. I guessed she understood Clusterspeak, or enough to know I was trying to get her out of there. She didn't know me from a trooper, of course, and wasn't likely to come willingly. I thought about it for a few seconds and then I shrugged. "If that's the way you feel about it . . . okay."
I let down the cover gently. I wasn't lying about the fire, but some of us have to start making decisions early in life about whether or not we want to survive or what will help us do it. I started doing that for myself age four after my ma walked into a freezer to save me. Before they found me with her, trying to wake her up, wondering if I should cut her the way she'd told me.
I didn't get down the line much more than a few handholds before I heard yanking on the inside of that lid and kicking at it. But a little kid couldn't get it loose, not from the inside. Sighing to myself, I came back and pulled it open. Out she shot right in front of me, so fast and hard she bounced off the other wall and then up at an angle. She flailed around over my head and to my right. I pulled myself level under her and reached up. "Take my hand."
She slapped it away—too scared. I held it out to her again. "Take my hand and I'll take you someplace safe."
Something in the tone got through because she stopped flailing and stared down at me, black eyes against a black bulkhead. She drifted into my handhold. I let her come in on her own time, but when she bumped against me, she grabbed hold—on instinct, I think, like a monkey or a baby. I started off down the dark corridor again, the cold, dry air blowing past our faces. "I'll get you some food," I said.
I found one of the automated food dispensers and ordered some up: rice and bread and other things grown in a hydroponics lab that imitated the womb of a planet's soil.
I took the kid back to my cubicle at the autohotel and gave her half the food. She wolfed it down so fast she almost snapped my hand off. I thought she'd puke, but it stayed down. She was practiced at hunger, then. As I watched her, I figured her for older than I'd thought, maybe five or six, but undersized. Once she'd finished, I took the cartons away from her and dumped them down the disposal outside my cubicle in the autohotel. I took her a few meters down the black and silver hall to the washers. No one was inside—I liked the third shift because I never ran into anybody and nobody talked to me. I tossed her in, clothes and all. She yowled, but nobody can hear you inside of the washers unless they're right next to them. "Don't yell; it won't let you drown," I told her. "Get your clothes off in there while I go find you some new ones."
I closed the door on her—I figured if she'd made it to age six hiding in disposals and hadn't burned yet, she wouldn't drown inside of a washer, either. But then, I never claimed to have any parenting skills, aside from what I'd picked up protecting the little ones from the other big kids at the institution. The babies always needed more attention than they got; the bullies knew that and used it. I was forty-three years old and I could probably count and name every person I'd ever spoken to. If I thought about it long enough, I might remember most of what we'd talked about, too.
I punched in a scan of her in the washer and ordered up the clothes. The autohotel had to think on it and check the station databases. Tourists didn't take their kids down this far and we transients didn't go in much for carting around little ones from station to station. I picked something purple because I had a vague memory that kids like silly colors and purple had always seemed silly to me—some kind of interstitial color between blue and red. Something was clicking over inside my head that I had to add to the order, but I couldn't remember it right off.
At that moment, Kip let himself in through the blast door from the outside corridor. As he stepped into the autohotel, the lights came up that next step brighter the way they do for more than two people passing within five minutes. "Hey, Tam. What's up?"
I turned my head toward the washer and then the clothesmaker and back to him. "Found a kid," I managed finally. "Getting it some clothes."
His breath hitched a little and he got a look on his face I didn't like, the kind of look dust-users get when they need a fix and you're in the way. "'It'?"
"Her," I admitted.
He frowned at me with official-type disapproval. "You got a kid in here? The autohotel is only for adults, Tam."
"I know that. I found her. I'll take her in to the station admins tomorrow morning before anybody gets nervous about it." Martial law had been imposed on Dragon 9 about a year before I was born, after a revolution gone bad. The troopers had come in shooting, kicking heads and spacing bodies. We learned that in the institution school, though by that time, I had a drug-management implant for beating the hell out of an older kid; I loathed bullies. I couldn't learn or remember much through the haze, let alone Cluster history I'd never use. But I remembered that. Could be because my ma always claimed I was her clone and therefore, wanted. But I learned in school you can't make a boy clone from a woman. I already knew she'd been one of the leaders in the revolution and once I learned about how you made a natural baby, how long it took, I got it. I'd remember how she used to slap me sometimes when she got drunk and call me a little bastard. And I can count.
Kip shrugged. "All right. Just make sure you bring her in before the troopers come after you for not reporting her. You don't want to get in the way of that juggernaut." Much as I normally didn't mind his presence, I really didn't want him around once I hauled the kid out. "'Her,' you said? What's her name?" That same funny look came over his face and vanished.
I blinked, taken aback. I didn't know very many women's names. "Um . . . Ruja."
"Rooh-yaaa," he drew it out. "Wasn't that your mother's name?"
"Yeah." We'd talked about my ma once or twice—right after we'd talked about Kip's perfect parents and his not-so-perfect Uncle Arun. And what Uncle Arun used to do with him.
"Is she gonna come out saying that's her name, Tam?" He slumped down on a handhold so he could look at me level. Kip was what the ladies liked to call "tall, dark, and handsome," none of which I was. His parents had made sure he'd come out of the womb that way. He just had that one little flaw, courtesy of his uncle. "Is it?"
"She doesn't talk." The thing I'd been trying to remember cycled to the top of my brain and I snapped my fingers. Of course. I'd got yelled at enough times in the institution about wetting the bed to know. I ordered up two sets of diapers, too.
Kip glanced at the washer, which had kachunked into the rinse cycle. The distant yowling echoing inside had long since stopped and I thought I heard a squeal or two mixed with lots of splashing that sounded playful. Being as filthy as she'd been couldn't have been all that comfortable. "Why not?"
"I don't know. She just hasn't yet." The washer went to a blow-dry and then stopped cycling right about the time the clothes came up. I opened the door and handed them in, a set of the diapers first, to make sure she got the point and put them on. I got a glimpse of tan skin and big black eyes in the bright lights of the washer before I turned away. I knew you weren't supposed to peek at people naked, especially little girls.
I turned to Kip, my back to the washer. Sure, he was good with his meds and he'd never actually touched a kid as far as I knew. But he was still on that official list as a "participant" in Arun's crime. "Look, Kip, maybe you should . . ." I gestured down the hall toward his cubicle.
He started. "What? Oh! Oh, yeah. Yeah, I should. I'll see you later."
"See you tomorrow on the line." I watched him move off to his cubicle along the handholds. I felt a little bad, but better that than give him a big source of temptation. I felt a tap on my arm and shoved the purple set of overalls into the washer without looking. "Here ya go."
When she came out, she smelled like soap instead of rotten banana and spit, and her previously matted hair made a black halo around her head in all directions, floating in the station air. I couldn't help but crack a smile. I tried patting down her hair, but it didn't stay very well. "Come on. You're probably tired."
She grabbed the back of my coveralls as I moved down the corridor to my cubicle. I had her crawl in first, then crawled in after her. I'd had a long day and I was already yawning. "Tomorrow, I'll take you upstation and see if we can find your people," I said. She didn't answer and I couldn't tell if she heard me or not. I didn't know why I was talking to her so much. I talked to myself a lot when I was alone, but in front of other people, my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth, as the old book said. But she was so little and I had been that little once. Nobody had treated me very well, then, not after ma died. They didn't need to when I had no other kin.
I settled the kid down with her back to me. I couldn't do much about blankets, as I only had the one sleeping bag, but she didn't seem to mind. It had to be better than a disposal. "How do you feel about being called 'Ruja'?" I said, but I fell asleep before I heard any of the answer I knew wouldn't come.
I woke up in the middle of a fight. I lashed out and didn't hit anything. Someone was behind me, yanking on my coveralls so they cut into my neck. They stopped as soon as I sat up. I looked back at the kid. She was lying there in the half-dark from the red comm button light, staring up at me with those black-hole eyes. They took in everything and didn't let nothing out. "What're you doing?" I said to her, but she just settled down next to me, as if I'd proven something to her. Grumbling to myself, I lay down and drifted off again.
This time, I came straight out of a dream of being strangled by a mooring line right through my helmet, clawing at the cable as anoxia made the jewel-like stars blazing all round me and the station and the ships moored there turn grey. I woke up with a mighty cough in a coffin-sized cubicle with a kid hauling away from behind. When I sat up this time, I banged my head and used a few curses Kip had taught me by yelling them in rapid-fire over the comm for hours on end. Again, the kid let up. I twisted around. She was already lying down again, staring at me with those eyes. "What're you doing?" I said. Now I'd cursed myself out, I was starting to think. Why would you have done that when you were a kid? I got hold of a reason, but I wasn't sure if it was hers. It sure wasn't a reason for a normal, happy little kid, but nobody would've stuck one of those in a disposal.
"You know," I said. "When I was your age, my ma, she died. I kept trying to wake her up, but I never could. Is that what you're trying to do—to make sure you can wake me up?"
She chewed on her lip before she nodded. It was a little nod, but I got the picture. I felt sad for her; if she was an orphan, they'd send her to the institution like me and she'd hate that. I had. But at least tonight, I could do something for her.
"Okay. Here's what we'll do. Come over here and put your head against my chest." She hesitated. "It's okay. I want to show you something." She inched over my hip to the other side and put her arm over me, laying her head on my chest up near my shoulder. "You hear that thumping noise?" I felt the nod this time. "That's my heart. People, when they're still alive, their hearts beat. If you can hear my heart, you can still wake me up. So, just you keep your head there tonight and you'll know everything's fine, all right?" Another tiny nod. "Good."
We both slept for the rest of the night.
The next morning, she'd wet the diaper and got all embarrassed about it. I thought she looked relieved when all I did was say, "Good thing I got that extra diaper last night."
I got her washed up again and clothed in a new purple jumpsuit and took her upstation where all the admin offices were. I hated the extra gravity. It hurt my legs.
They were always transferring some official up from some planet, and they couldn't lose bone mass living and working down in the center, oh, no. The office we were looking for was only about a quarter of the way up, though, because it would only take poor people, so the gravity was light. Ruja wasn't happy about going; she kept grabbing at handholds and holding us back. But I kept prying her loose and we arrived in pretty good time. I still had to meet up with Kip and get in a full day of stocking up. The starstatic was building up out there, and I needed to reach my ship and be in place before it got too high. I had navigation beacons to set up and maintain and all that fun shit you do when you're running a lightship on one of the busiest navigational routes in the Cluster. Kip had had the motherwit to get out to his ship early. He was a good buddy and he might have been bigger than me, but he knew I could—and would—take anyone in a fight. I wasn't kidding about his staying away from temptation. And for him, Ruja was a big temptation.
The corridors got progressively bigger and lighter and busier as we went. Rich folk. The gravity got heavier until we were bouncing along the outer wall of the corridors in a crowd of people going in both directions. By the time we arrived at the admin's headquarters, my palms were sweating and Ruja's eyes were so big, I thought they really were black holes. The door intimidated me, even though it was open with people passing in and out. I pulled her inside. I got a number and we found some sticky patches in the waiting room to attach ourselves to while we waited. The room was filling up with people along the walls and then clinging to straps from the ceiling and floor. We all kept sinking toward the door.
People were there mostly to beg—for free air credits, food credits, living quarters, a license here, a franchise there. Even though we'd arrived early, we had to wait an hour. Finally, a mechanical voice called us and I moved up to the floor-length window with Ruja, balancing on a pole that stuck out of the ceiling. A woman's image wavered inside the glass.
"State your name and occupation," she snapped. They had given up on serial numbers for identification a long time ago. Nobody bothered to remember them.
"Tam Severs," I said. "I run the lightship in the Kali Six sector."
The woman nodded. She had chocolate skin, strawberry-colored hair and flat, electric-blue eyes that sparked. I'd had strawberries once, when I was nine. A tourist had given me some as a handout while I was on a work/study junket in Maintenance at Dragon Seven Station. "What do you want?" she said.
I pushed Ruja up over my head toward the glass. "I found her in a disposal on Zero Level. I don't know if she's got kin or not, but if she does, I figure they'll be pretty worried about her. And if not, she'll need looking after."
The woman blinked. It seemed unnatural and I wondered if she was real or a threshold program. You couldn't even get a live person these days to talk to you. "Disposal issues should be reported to Maintenance on Level Four."
Ruja was squirming in my grip. "I said I found her in the disposal on Zero Level—a little kid. Somebody abandoned her or lost her or something. I'm reporting her so she can get into social care."
The eyes sparked again. "The station is not responsible for children's accidents. Keep your child out of the disposal next time." I'd always thought Artificial Intelligence had its limits, despite what they said. I didn't like being right this time.
I lowered Ruja, who grabbed me around my shoulders and clung to me. I was in public and I never had a voice in public, but something hot and fierce rose up inside me that gave me one—maybe it was Ruja's voice. "You goddamned, stupid AI—she's been abandoned. I'm reporting it."
"The station is not responsible for the safety of your child. I repeat: the station is not responsible for the safety of your child. Please leave or I must call Security." The picture flickered over my head, godlike, ready to disappear in a puff of electronic divinity. "Thank you for using Station Administration Services."
"My child." The way Ruja was holding onto me, it felt like it. "Fine. My child now. My responsibility now." I stepped off the pole and let us sink back to the door as a skinny, smelly woman in a yellow coverall shouldered up. The AI was already calling another number, Ruja and me already forgotten and disposed of, and hers was next.
We sank back out into the corridor. "All right," I told Ruja. "You can let go now." She slid down until she was bouncing gently next to me, looking up at me, holding my hand. "I guess you come with me, now," I said. "You ever been in a spacesuit by yourself? Not a mama bundle?" She shook her head. "Well, today, you're going to learn."
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Part 2 of 2 Kip looked worried and shook his head a lot when I showed up at the airlock on Level Two with Ruja in tow. "I don't know, Tam. Sounds like that AI needs adjusting. They don't let people adopt little kids just like that." I'd bought Ruja a used spacesuit in a tourist shop before coming back downstation. The tourist suits were expensive as hell, even the ex-rentals, but they were secure and the only way I could get her a working kid-size suit. I stuck Ruja in a changing closet and gave her the suit to put on. I showed her the basics, then shut the door before I turned back to Kip so she couldn't hear us—and to stop Kip from having to avoid looking at her. "You think they'll come after her?" I knew they would, but I needed his expert advice. "Did you tell them your name?" Kip said, head on one side and squinting at me in the cluttered airlock's white and silver reflections. "Yeah." It had seemed the right thing to do at the time—read: official thing. "Then, yeah, I think as soon as they run through all the recent interactions that AI's had—which could take a day, could take a week, depending on where she is in her cycle and how conscientious her maintenance is—yeah, I think they're gonna come down here like bats outta Hell." "Bats," I said, not too sure of the word. "You know, like those things you've had in your sensory tower for the past five years, ever since you brought up that planetside shipment of bananas. Those little creatures that fly around and squeak and shit on your gamma ray sensors." "Oh, those." I wasn't sure if he was making fun of me. "Yeah, those. Look, Tam, admins all over the Cluster can call up your juvie record at the touch of a button and then they'll suddenly get interested in this little girl, just because you have her." "I didn't do anything wrong," I blurted out. The old accusation that had brought me out swinging every time when I was a kid—until I learned never to throw the first punch—always stung, and the last person I wanted to hear it from was Kip. "I know that, Tam, and neither have I. But people still think things, because then, they don't have to think how they jerked you from pillar to post for ten years until you were fourteen because nobody wanted you after your mother died. People in power don't care if you were the victim, just about saving face. They kept you on drug implants to keep you docile for four of those years, after you kicked up a stink for them knocking you down every time you got a step up, and you're expecting mercy or sense from them? We're talking about respectable people, here, not honest or kind or honorable ones. They'll do whatever it takes to keep looking respectable." I hated this goddamned station; it had all but killed my mother. But to go to another station meant renegotiating my entire life, from air credits to my lightship's license. "But they don't want Ruja," I said. He shrugged. "They will as soon as they realize you have her. 'Tam the Cannibal'—sound familiar?" I felt my lips thin. "About as familiar as 'Kip the Pedophile.'" He turned pale. "So, you get the picture. Look, if we get her out of here before they catch on, I can get you both out to your ship, no problem. By the time the starstatic clears and you need to come back in for supplies, it'll all have died down and we can all pretend she was yours all along." That sounded all too easy, but I guess I wanted to believe it. "You're saying we should just keep packing in the supplies as if nothing's happened." He nodded. "Except that we hurry it up and get you out sooner, if we can." He jerked his head toward the closet. "I take it you're bringing her out today?" "Well, there's nobody to leave her with here. She's as safe with us out there as in here. We have a good safety record." "Can't argue with that logic, can I? All right. I'll go up the line and wait for you." He secured his helmet, then stepped into the outer airlock and hit the button on the other side. The door rang shut behind him. I heard the air blasting out distantly from the other side. A banging from inside the closet door got my attention. I opened the door. Ruja was inside, looking scared, with the suit up around her neck. "Sorry," I said. I got her out of there and suited up. Her suit was a big, ugly, awkward orange thing with two many bags and folds, but it was that or me putting on a mama bundle and sticking her inside it on my back. I had a feeling she'd like that even less and six was old enough to wear your own suit. "Kip scares you, doesn't he?" She didn't answer, but she didn't shake her head and she wouldn't look at me. "I know what you mean. You're a smart little monkey, aren't you? That's good; you hold on to that." I'd lost count of the number of people who'd tried to tell me black was white and bad was good when I was a kid just for their own comfort. It was evil. "Kip doesn't mean you harm, but yeah, he has some problems. So, I won't leave you alone with him—ever. Is that okay?" A nod, with her eyes cast down to the floor. "Okay. Let's get this thing on you better. You don't want a leak in your suit. You get anoxia and you could be down for the count before you knew it." Kip had gone up the line. I shut the outer door from inside and started it pressurizing again—it would take a good twelve minutes. I got Ruja suited up and then did up my own adult-red suit myself, pulling the helmet on last and latching up all the seals. I steered her out into the airlock and turned to face her. I turned on the comms for both suits and pointed at my helmet. "I can't see your face when we're out there, so if I'm asking you something and you want to tell me 'okay,' you do this, okay?" I held up a fist with a raised thumb. She started to nod, then remembered and raised her gloved hand, thumb up. "Good girl." I turned her around and pointed at the big red button on the wall by the door. "See that? That's for closing the door. If somebody hits it, you get out of the way, because it closes quick." She answered with the thumb up faster this time. "Now, I'm gonna close the door and let out the air and I want you to stick by me, okay?" I hooked her up to my belt with the buddy cable. "We're attached, so you'll be fine." I was talking like that because I always talked myself through this part. I wasn't sure how she'd deal with it, either, but I figured we'd see that soon enough. I hit the button, which started up the whole cycle, and grabbed a handhold, gesturing Ruja to do the same. The doors opened easily enough after the depressurization stopped, though they were getting creaky with age. If you could hear them, that was usually a bad sign—it meant they were opening up before all the air had let out and the cycle was way out of whack. I couldn't hear anything, so we were all right. Light started to leak in as soon as the doors cracked. Once they'd opened wide enough, I pulled the supplies Kip and I had packed up yesterday on the sled loose from the sticky tabs and gestured Ruja to help me push the sled out the door. Maybe if I kept her busy, she wouldn't freak out. As the doors spread wide, the mooring line appeared below us, stretching out and up past the shadowed airlock and beyond sight to, I knew on faith, Kip's ship nearly a kilometer away. Kip couldn't afford to rent a dock, so he moored to one of the navigational buoys off-station. I clipped the sled to the line and got on board, Ruja scrambling up behind me. I could feel her lifting herself up so she could peer out and around. Wherever she'd been before, it hadn't ever been on a spacewalk. I kicked off the sled jets in a short burst and we drifted out of the airlock along the line. I kept the nose tilted up so we wouldn't get fouled. Station walls slid past us, flat and gray, as the light brightened into an auburn/red/purple/blue glow and the dust started hitting my faceplate. As soon as we cleared the station, I heard a gasp over my comm and Ruja lost her grip on me. I hit the retrojets a puff and drifted to a stop so I could reel her in. She was flailing around, making squeaking noises like the mice that had infested my engine room for the past five years. You'd the think the damned cat colony that had come from the one single female I'd brought on board (and who just happened to be pregnant) would have solved the problem, but no. They'd all settled into a little balanced ecosystem, instead. I always knew whenever the oxygen/carbon dioxide balance was off, since I'd get drunken mice staggering across the top of the control panels. I tugged in the line and grabbed her flailing arms and legs in a bear hug. "It's okay, little monkey! I've got you. It's just the Cluster. It's just stars." Around us pulsed stars of every color, jewels in the biggest treasure chest in this arm of the galaxy, trillions of times larger than the station. Old red giants dissipated into the gloom, waiting to go supernova, while yellow and orange planet-warmers marked their position as diffuse blobs and bright, blue babies peeked through veils of dust. Still other precious veils glowed with new star life in tans and browns, hidden from human eyes. The view stretched for ten light years in some directions before the visibility cut out. Light, light everywhere and the omnipresent stardust. It could drive a soul mad if you hadn't grown up in it. Ruja stopped struggling as I spoke to her, but I think my arms around her were what did it. They gave her a reference in the hugeness of the filled void before her. And she was only a kid. Kids haven't learned yet how to restrict their imaginations to a set of limited data points reading "normal." "Everybody okay down there?" Kip had nudged his ship a hundred meters down toward the station to get within radio range. "Tam? You guys okay?" "We're fine," I said. Ruja was still staring, reaching a tentative glove out to one particularly large and near red giant in a cloud in front of us, its light gilding her glove. Curiosity had got the better of her terror. "Just a touch of agoraphobia. Usual stuff." "She coping okay?" "Well, she's curious now. I'd call that a good sign." I eased off my grip and turned her around. "Now, you get on my back and hold on tight, all right? Everything will be fine. I promise." After a moment, she gave me a tentative thumbs up. "Good girl. Up you go." We rode the rest of the way up the line to Kip's ship. He let us in and was waiting for us at the inner airlock. "She okay now?" "I think so." I got the helmet off Ruja's head before I answered. Her hair flew out all over the place and she was breathing fast, looking shaky, eyes wide. But she was grinning, too. "Yeah, she's fine." I patted her on the head, trying to smooth down that damned hair—she needed a clip or something for it. "Bet you're pretty pleased with yourself now, aren't you, little monkey?" She nodded, then gave me two thumbs up. I grinned at Kip and he smiled back. "Yeah, she's spacer material. No ground-hugging tourist, this one." Kip's smile turned sad. "It's kinda too bad . . ." "Don't worry about it," I said in a warning tone—Not in front of the kid. "Let's stick to the plan, see what happens. I think it'll be fine."
It was fine for about five days. We did a few more trips back and forth that day. Then, I took her back to the station and bought her a teddy bear while we were getting supplies, along with a clip for her hair. I'd considered a dolly, but the only one they had was plastic with a mouthy, girly AI personality and she didn't seem to like it. Guess a little kid who could handle the Cluster age sixish wasn't the dolly type. She sure liked that bear, though, hugged it more than she hugged me after that. I let her stuff it in her space suit against her belly and we jetted the supplies up to the ship. At night, she slept with her ear to my chest, listening for my heart. She didn't shake me awake, so I guess it worked for her. We'd got most of the supplies up there and by that fifth day were checking out of the autohotel when they finally showed up. There was a woman at the head of two station guards in blue uniforms. She wore a green civilian coverall and a bland smile calculated not to offend. She reminded me of one of the counselors from the institution who had always told me oh-so-gently how messed up I was. She lumbered, as if she hadn't quite got the hang of freefall. As soon as she saw the woman and the guards, Ruja ducked behind me. "Mr. Severs?" the woman said. I blinked, so unused to being called by my family name that for a minute there, I didn't know what she meant. The last time someone had called me that was after I got my ma's ship back. Some guy had bought it for a song after they carted me off to the institution. It got traded around until I got out age fourteen and discovered I still had a claim. I worked my ass off for two years, saving up money. Then, I tracked down the latest owner in an airlock one day and offered to buy it. He laughed at me. I told him we could take it to the admins, see what they said. He got nervous, then, knowing it could go either way. Or, I said, as I put my hand on the airlock door button, I could just space us both. Or he could take my money and give me the title to my ship. He gave up the ship. "Um, yeah?" I said to the woman. "That's me. Severs." The bland smile expanded, but the two big guards behind her remained stone-faced. "We're following up a report you made about a lost child you found down on Zero Level?" "I did?" I started inching backward along the wall. I could only bluff so long before they got impatient. Ruja seemed glued to my back. No way did she want to go with them. "Yes, you did. Is that the child?" The woman tried to lean forward and had to stop herself from rolling by catching herself on a wall rung. "Come here, princess," she said to Ruja, talking through me. "You're coming with us." Ruja started to shake, but she wouldn't come out from behind me. "This isn't that child," I said. "But she matches the description the AI gave us, Mr. Severs," the woman said. She still hadn't given me her name. Why should she when she had all the power? "Ruja's with me," I said. I don't know where the strength came from for the next words, but come it did. "She's not going anywhere. For sure not with you." The smile vanished. It was almost a relief. "Mr. Severs, I'm sorry, but we can't allow you to keep that child in your custody. You've been seen in the company of a known pedophile, who appears to be working with you and . . . well . . . your own history is very sad." "I didn't kill my mother," I said in a steady tone. "And I didn't eat her, either." My voice started to rise, despite myself, making the woman push backward, eyes wide, and the two guards push forward, grim-faced. "And I didn't see you giving a damn about this little girl when she needed your help to get her out of a disposal before she burned up like a piece of trash!" I don't know what set me off—Ruja's desperate whine into the small of my back, heard only by me, or an all-too-familiar-looking needle in the hand of one of the guards—but they both happened about the same time. I kicked out hard and got one guard right in the balls. The other one pushed forward and I lashed out with my left hand, knocking the needle free to clatter against the wall and shatter. As the first guard curled around himself, I jumped off the floor and grabbed an overhead handhold. Swinging forward and up, I kicked the second one in the face. Behind them, the woman was fumbling with a device and shouting into it. I launched myself from the handhold between the two gagging guards and grabbed the woman. She yelped but the sound cut off as I slammed her headfirst into the wall. Blood came out of her scalp in globules and she slumped, clutching her head. Let her smile that smile now. I scrambled backwards fast, lashing out at the two guards for a few more good kicks and blows. Then, I turned and pushed myself toward Ruja. "Go! Go!" She didn't need any more urging. I had all I could do just to keep up. We were almost at the airlock before I dared call Kip via the ship's antenna. They'd hear it, too, but I couldn't help that. "Kip, come in; we have a problem." He answered back within seconds. "What's up? What's wrong?" "Get down here as close as you can. We're coming up right now." Ruja had gone ahead of me into the outer airlock. I yanked out our suits and started suiting her up, trying to let my hands work naturally and quickly. "No leaks," I babbled as I worked. "No leaks. Remember? Do it right." A clamor broke out in the corridor. They burst into the inner airlock. I didn't hesitate. Even though I was only half in my suit, I turned and slapped the red button. The door slammed shut in their faces. Air started to hiss out. We had twelve precious minutes before it cycled through and they could come after us. I got Ruja suited up, telling myself we both had time even as I knew only she did. I was already feeling lightheaded when I got her finished and suited myself up. I didn't have time to do all the helmet seals, but the air was rapidly disappearing. No time left. I'd just have to hope we got up to Kip's ship in time for me and my brain. The doors opened and I pushed out, shoving Ruja ahead of me. She went up the line like a monkey. I followed, but my mind was already starting to slow and black stars edged out the brilliant reds, blues, and oranges around me. Ruja came back for me and started tugging on my suit. "Go ahead, monkey, go on," I gasped. "I'm just gonna lie down for a bit, lie down here in the freezer and when you run out of food, you come in and get me." I could have sworn she said something to me, but now she sounded like my mother, and I wondered if I'd meet ma again on the other side. . . . Ma knelt in front of me and hugged me. It scared me. It wasn't one of her sullen moods that I understood. "There's no food left, Tam," she said. "Not enough for us both before they come get us. I'm gonna go lie down in the freezer now, okay? You keep eating the food we got. And if you run out, you just come in with the knife and you cut a piece off me, okay?" She hugged me again, awkwardly, since she wasn't used to it any more than me. "I'm sorry I wasn't a better ma for you. I love you Tam. Don't ever forget that." She turned and opened the freezer door. She went inside and shut it behind her and when I finally got up the guts to go in there against her say-so to wake her up, I couldn't do it. She was stiff and icy cold and they say they found me there, trying to shake her awake and crying. But if they did, I don't remember it. Somebody was shaking me hard. I grunted and tried to push them off, only to find myself stuck to a deck with my helmet off and a mask over my face. I opened my eyes to see Ruja staring back at me. She smiled when she saw my eyes were open. "You sure do like to cut it close." The voice came from beyond Ruja. Kip came into view. "Check the seals on your suit next time." "Sorry," I croaked. "We were in a hurry." "I know." He nodded. "I had to turn the comm off after a while. They got pretty insulting." He crouched next to me. "We're in transit; doubt they'll catch us now. The starstatic's already too high. I'll take you guys to your ship and maybe I'll just stay with you until this dies down a bit if you're willing. Maybe we can go to Dragon 6 after that. You haven't made any enemies there yet, have you?" I shook my head. "It's on the other side of the Cluster. Too far away to visit." I reached out to grasp his sleeve as he turned away. "Kip . . . thank you." He glanced at me and Ruja, who had her head jammed up against my suit, trying to hear my heart. "I wanted to help. Nobody helped me. My parents didn't believe me when I told them about my uncle, and the shrink they sent me to for 'lying' diagnosed me as a pedophile. Nobody stood up for me, nobody. The only other person I ever told was you—and you just took it in stride. You had your mother and everybody just assumed you'd turned cannibal after she died, not that she did this great thing for you." He swallowed. "I wanted to do for you and Ruja what nobody did for me." I hugged Ruja to me. With the oxygen coming back to my brain, I finally realized that we were home free. "We'll be fine, Kip. All three of us. We're all we have." He smiled and when he looked at Ruja, it didn't seem creepy for once, as if he'd mastered whatever temptation his uncle had put in him like a bad seed, at least for now. "Well, that's better than what we ever had before." He had a point there. |
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