Arkfall Read online

  Osaji had often thought the same things about Ben, but hearing them expressed so coarsely made her bristle. The intensity of the emotions she had been feeling reversed polarity, turning outward at the hateful offworlder beside her. He had had chances she would never get, and what had he done with them?

  A manager came out from one of the back offices and tried to draw the man into a private room to pacify him. The offworlder, perhaps sensing he would lose his audience, stood up to defend his ground. He was short and his spindly legs were a little bowed, but he had a ferocious demeanor.

  “Do you know who you’re talking to, son?” he said. “Ever hear of Scrappin’ Jack Halliday, who captured Plamona Outpost in the War of the Wrist?” When no one around him showed the slightest recognition, he gave an oath. “Of course not. You bottom-dwellers don’t care about anything unless it happens ten feet in front of your noses.”

  The manager tried to be conciliatory, but Osaji could see it would have no effect. Her anger had been burning like a slow fuse all last round, and now it reached the end. She stood up and shouted, “Did you come here just to make us listen to your profanity and your complaints? If you can’t make it on Ben, that’s too bad—but stop whining!”

  Scrappin’ Jack looked like he had been ambushed from the direction he least expected. Rattled, he stared at Osaji as if hearing phantom sniper fire, and all he said was, “What the— ?”

  A little appalled at what she had done, Osaji sat down again facing her agent. At last the manager was able to lead the intemperate offworlder away. The office slowly resumed its normal functioning.

  “That’s what they’re all like on the other worlds,” Osaji’s agent said in a low voice. “An emigrant has to cope with that, day in and day out. Are you sure—?”

  “No,” Osaji said. “I think the lifestream put him there to show me something. I am not supposed to leave Ben.”

  The agent smiled encouragingly.

  “I am grateful for your good work.” Outwardly composed again, Osaji gathered up her bags and left, feeling wrung out but relieved.

  2. Barnacles and Floaters

  Osaji’s sister Kitani lived with her family in a dome that was divided up into pie-shaped Domestic Units surrounding a central dining and recreation area. Kitti’s DU was on the second floor, meaning it was smaller, though the family had been on the waiting list for an upgrade for two rounds. It was one of the compromises people made to live barnacle. Brother-in-law Juko answered the door with a red-faced, howling baby in his arms. He was a gangling man with a perpetual, slightly goofy smile—and it was just as well, for the hubbub he ushered her into would have induced hypertension in anyone less tuned out. The DU had only two rooms—a sleeproom and an everything-else room—and their older daughter was having a tantrum in the sleeproom. The main room was simply crammed with furniture, cookware, baby strollers, clothes, and diaper bins. Mota’s baggage formed an obstacle in the middle of the floor. “Tell your Aunt Saji it is good to see her,” Juko shouted to the baby in his arms. As an in-law, it wasn’t polite for him to speak to Osaji directly.

  Osaji dumped her bags on the floor—there was nowhere else to put them—and tried to give Juko a greeting just as the baby threw up all down his front. He smiled as if his face didn’t know what else to do, and disappeared into the sleeproom.

  Osaji’s grandmother sat in an armchair, looking slightly dazed. Kitti came out of the sleeproom and gave Osaji a frazzled hug. Looking at the mound of baggage, she said, “Is it that you’re changing arks?”

  “Yes,” Osaji said. “It wasn’t a good fit, with Cormorin.” Propriety forbade her to come any closer to speaking ill of others.

  “That’s too bad,” Kitti said with a remote, distracted sympathy, as if it didn’t concern her. Osaji wanted to pull her aside right then and make her plea, but it didn’t seem like the right moment.

  The right moment didn’t come that evening, either—a crowded, chaotic succession of rearrangements, feedings, and infant outbursts. Not until the next morning did Osaji and Kitti get some time alone together, when they took the children to the playground in an adjoining dome. They sat on a bench and watched barnacle children frolic under the overhanging sea.

  Kitti was first to bring up the subject. “Mota’s really deteriorated,” she said. The bald declaration—not tentative, not a question—showed how shocked she had been. It made Osaji uncomfortable.

  “You think so?” she said, though it was exactly what she had wanted to talk about.

  “Don’t you? She’s much more weak and unsteady on her feet. You ought to get her more exercise. You know, ageds can still build up muscle tone if they work at it.”

  “Ah,” Osaji said.

  “And her mind seems to be wandering. She repeats herself, and loses track of what people are saying. You need to stimulate her more, challenge her mentally, get her involved.”

  “Isn’t it just that she is old?” Osaji said.

  Kitti mistook it for a real question. “Age doesn’t have to mean deterioration. There are plenty of ageds who are still intelligent and active.”

  “But Mota’s not.”

  “No, she needs to be encouraged to improve herself.”

  Osaji felt an upwelling of desperation. “I’ve been wondering whether an ark is the best setting for her. Perhaps she would be better off elsewhere.”

  “Where?” Kitti said. “The domes for the aged are overcrowded, and you can’t get anyone in without a medical permit. She’s not that badly off.”

  “Still, it’s really hard in an ark. There’s no room for unproductives in an ark. And it’s not just her; she makes me an unproductive too, because I have to look after her. It’s two wasted berths, not just one.” And two wasted lives.

  Abruptly, Kitti changed the subject. “What about you? Have you met anyone?”

  Osaji thought back on the slow torture of the last round: every day regimented by the need to look after Mota punctually. Not once had she broken free from that elastic band of obligation. Not for one moment had Mota been completely out of her mind. There had been no space left for anything else.

  “You could register, you know,” Kitti said. “The computers do a good job matching people.”

  Most Bennites found mates this way. In a place where everyone lived in isolated pockets scattered about the seafloor, it was the most practical way to meet someone compatible. Osaji had resisted it for years, out of a waning hope that she would meet someone the old, magical way, guided by the fateful currents of the lifestream. At the thought of her naivete, she felt a sharp ache of disappointment. “Who would take a mate with an aged attached?” she said, and the bitterness sounded in her voice.

  Kitti finally heard it. “You can’t let her ruin your life,” she said.

  Though Kitti had not meant to sound accusatory, Osaji felt it that way. She burst out, “Kitti, if you would only take her for a round...”

  “Me?” Kitti said in astonishment. “I have the young ones. You’ve seen our DU.”

  “I know.” But the young ones, the DU—they were all Kitti’s choices. Osaji had had no choices of her own. Kitti’s had foreclosed all of hers.

  The feeling of constriction returned. The thought of another round like the last was unendurable.

  “I’m afraid,” Osaji said in a low voice, “that I’m going to start to hate her.”

  Warmly, Kitti put an arm around Osaji’s shoulder and hugged her tight. “Oh, you would never do that. You’re a good and loving granddaughter. What you do for her is really admirable.” She looked in Osaji’s bleak face and said coaxingly, “Come on, smile. I know you love her, and that’s what counts.”

  Kitti had gotten so used to dealing with children that she couldn’t interact any other way. All problems seemed like childhood problems to her, all solutions reduced to lollipops and lullabies. Osaji stood abruptly, wanting to do something evil, wanting to do anything but what a good and loving granddaughter would do.

  That evening, after d
inner, she rose and said, “It is necessary to go on an errand.” Luckily, Kitti and Juko were busy with the children, and no one offered to go with her.

  The docks were still crowded with delivery carts, baggage handlers, and floaters coming and going. She walked down the harshly lit aisle, pausing at each tubular port where arkmates had posted their crew needs. She hurried past Cormorin’s port, noting resentfully that they were advertising two berths.

  While she was reading a posting for a hydroponics technician, wondering if she could pass, a too-familiar voice made her whirl around and look. There he was—the outworlder, Scrappin’ Jack, trying to impress a circle of young longshoremen. She could hardly believe the authorities had not gotten rid of him. As her eyes fell on him, he looked up and saw her. “Holy crap,” he said, “it’s the shrew.”

  Quickly she looked away to avoid any further contact, but he was not so easily discouraged. Pushing through the traffic, he came to her side. He was barely taller than she, a compressed packet of offensiveness. “Listen,” he said, “about yesterday, in that office—you’ve got to understand, I was tripped out on cocaine.”

  As if that were an excuse. She scowled. “Why would an outworld mercenary come here?”

  He gave a dry, rasping laugh. “Sister, you’re not the first to ask. They asked me all through those godawful treatments for high-pressure adaptation. But rumor was, there were empty spaces here, unexplored territory, room to spread out. All true—it’s just under tons of water, and the habitations are a bit too togetherly for me.”

  An idea occurred to her, brilliant in its spitefulness. “Has he considered going on floatabout? That is the way to explore Ben.” To spend months trapped in a bubble drifting through opaque blackness, that was the real Ben. It would drive the man mad.

  “You think so?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said encouragingly. “There is an ark looking for new crew. It’s named Cormorin, just down the hall there. An applicant should ask for Dori.”

  He looked like he was actually considering it. “Why not?” he said. “It couldn’t get worse. Thanks, kiddo.”

  As he was turning to go, the floor shifted slightly underfoot, and the hanging lamps swayed. He stumbled. “Whoa,” he said, “I thought I was sober.” Osaji didn’t bother to tell him it had been a ground tremor, all too common here along the cleft. She turned to escape the other way.

  Across the hall, at the mouth to the next port, a tall, lean woman with a patch over one eye was watching, cross-armed. As Osaji passed, she said, “Is someone looking for an opening?”

  Osaji stopped. The woman’s shaggy hair was gray-streaked, but she looked fit, with a composed, cool look of self-sufficience about her. The eye patch seemed like an affectation, a declaration of nonconformity, and Osaji suddenly decided she liked it.

  “Lura of Divernon,” the woman introduced herself.

  “Osaji of ... nowhere, right now.”

  “Divernon needs a hand to help out at odd jobs, particularly wet ones.”

  Osaji looked down. “Your applicant enjoys wet.” She could not say she was good at it—that would seem unhumble—but she was. “Her profile is listed in the registry.”

  “I don’t need to see her profile,” Lura said. “I just saw her handle that offworld jerk.”

  Osaji looked up, astonished that anyone would commit to a crewmate without studying their compatibility profile. Lura’s one eye was disconcertingly alert, but laughing. From her face, it looked like she often laughed.

  “Does the young adventurer come with anyone else?” she asked.

  Osaji blushed, feeling a pang, but said, “No.”

  “It would not matter if they were less than married.” Lura had mistaken the cause of the blush.

  “How many does Divernon hold?” Osaji asked, to change the subject.

  “Myself, Mikita—and you. We were hoping to get a couple to join us, but we can’t wait any longer. The Authority wants us to vacate this port tonight.”

  “Just three?” It was a skeleton crew. They would work hard, but enjoy a lot of privacy.

  “Divernon’s last crew got married and left us,” Lura said wryly. “Maybe a single will be safer.”

  That sounded like a happy ark, if a little lonely. But just now, lonely seemed good. “The ark leaves tonight?” she said.

  “Can Osaji of nowhere be ready?”

  “Yes. She needs to fetch her baggage.”

  “Fetch away,” Lura said.

  As Osaji hailed an electric cart, she could scarcely believe what she was doing. Joining an ark on impulse, without studying the others’ profiles, without even meeting one of the two she would spend the next round with. It was an act of lunacy, or desperation.

  When she got back to Kitti’s DU, she had the cart driver wait out of sight while she went in, hoping to find the others preparing for bed so she could slip out unseen. Juko was in the sleeproom putting the children to bed, but Kitti was still in the front with Mota. She had opened up Mota’s baggage and was sorting through it. One wastebasket was already overflowing with items she had decided to discard.

  “What are you doing?” Osaji said.

  “Getting rid of some of the useless junk she is hauling around,” Kitti said with efficient cheerfulness. “Really, Saji, haven’t you looked through these bags? Some of this stuff must be fifty years old.” She held up a battered wooden flute, missing its reed. “What’s this for?”

  It was the flute Great-uncle Yamada had played on the day they married the two arks, Steptoe and Elderon, when Mota was young. Osaji had heard the story so many times she had often thought she would scream before hearing it again. She looked to Mota, expecting her to start the tale, but the old lady was withdrawn and silent.

  “Do you play it?” Kitti asked pointedly. Mota shook her head. “Then what use is it? Why carry it around?”

  “Do whatever you want with it,” Mota said, looking away. “I don’t mind.”

  Kitti stuffed it in the trash bin.

  Osaji looked at the discards. There was the dirty plush toy their grandfather had given Mota when she first got pregnant, the rock Yamada had brought from the surface, the little shell pendant for luck. Osaji knew all the stories. “Kitti, these things are hers. You can’t just throw them out.”

  “I’m asking her,” Kitti said. “She agrees.”

  Osaji could see it now: Mota was going to become an improvement project for Kitti. And Mota would just acquiesce, as she always had done. She had spent so many years trying to please others, she didn’t even remember what it was like to want something for herself. A tweak of compassion made Osaji say, “Can I talk to her, Kitti?”

  Kitti climbed to her feet. “I’ve got to go check on the little ones.”

  Osaji sat down next to Mota. The old woman took her hand and squeezed it, but said nothing.

  “Mota, I need to know something,” Osaji said softly. “Do you want to come with me for another round on an ark, or would you rather stay here?”

  Mota said nothing. Osaji waited, then said, “You have to decide. I’m leaving tonight.”

  “I want whatever you want,” Mota said. “Whatever makes you happy.”

  Even though she had half known that would be the answer, Osaji still felt a familiar burn of frustration. Her grandmother’s passivity was a kind of manipulation: a way to put all the responsibility onto others, an abdication of adulthood. Mota had always been like this, and there was absolutely no way to fight it. It made everyone around her into petty dictators. Osaji hated the role, and she hated Mota for forcing her into it.

  It should have been a decision made in love, but instead it was grim duty in Osaji’s heart when she said, “All right. You’re coming with me.”

  She emptied out the wastebasket and stuffed all the things back into the bag they had come from, then hefted as many duffels as she could carry and took them down to the waiting cart. The baggage took three trips, and on the fourth she helped Mota to the door. It crossed her mind to le
ave without saying anything, but at the last moment she stuck her head in the sleeproom door. “Kitti, we’re going now. Our ark is leaving.”

  “Now?” Kitti sounded startled, but not unhappy at the news. She got up to hug them both, wish them a happy round, and to press some food on them, which Osaji declined.

  All the way to the docks Osaji rehearsed what to say to her new arkmates. But when they got to Divernon, there was no sign of Lura, or anyone else. She helped Mota through the flexible tube into the ark, calling out “Hello? Divernons?” There was no answer.

  Finding the spare quarters was easy, so she left Mota inside and went back to ferry in the baggage. It occurred to her that it would be easy to hide Mota’s presence till they had embarked, and then it would be too late for anyone to object.

  She had just hooked the last bag over her shoulder and paid the driver when a shout from down the hall made her freeze. “Hey, shrike!”

  It was Scrappin’ Jack, coming down the hall like a torpedo locked on her coordinates. She would have ducked inside the ark, but feared he would just follow her.

  From twenty feet away he bellowed, “What’s the idea, sending me to that shrink-wrapped prig?”

  Everyone in earshot was staring, and Osaji could feel her ears glow. “A man should be quiet,” she pleaded.

  “You thought you could pull a fast one on Scrappin’ Jack, did you? Well, news flash: it takes more balls than you’ve got to screw me over.” He waved a hand as if to clear away invisible gnats. “That didn’t come out right.”

  “Go away!” Osaji commanded. Down the hall, Lura was approaching with another woman at her side. Keenly aware of first impressions, Osaji tried to pretend that the raging eruption in front of her did not exist. She waved at them cheerfully.

  With a deafening crash, the floor jerked sideways, flinging everyone to the ground. Carts overturned, their contents scattered, and broken glass rained down. Again the floor bucked, sending Osaji skidding across tile into a wall with bruising force. For a moment there was silence, except for the groan of stressed girders and the ominous sound of falling water. A stream of it was running down the floor. Then a third jolt came. Osaji scrabbled for a handhold.