Read A Thing As Good As Sunshine Online

Authors: Juliet Nordeen

A Thing As Good As Sunshine (4 page)

We
walked out of the oversized bathroom to find almost every inhabitant of the
Rock packed in shoulder-to-shoulder. Strangely, instead of a homogenous mixture
of people of all colors and sizes, I saw that like-clumped-together-with-like —
a cluster of folks who looked like Auntie, two separate groups that looked like
Sheng Tian, some who looked so much like Momma that I stared with my mouth
open, and then there was a whole bunch who looked like me, fair and light. The
crowd made way to allow our guards to take us through to a long, stone-shot-through-with-veins-of-ore
table in the middle of the room. At the head sat Parker, the Commanding Officer
and highest-ranking Perseus employee in the Rock. I knew him from his picture
on the TechPad. He wore all-yellow coveralls with a row of badges decorating
each sleeve. Eleven of his Governors, all in matching white coveralls, filled
the long sides of the table, leaving two chairs at the opposite end for Momma
and me.

I sat, but
Momma stood, until forced into her seat by a guard, then she placed both feet
up on the table, trying to appear unworried about the situation. But I knew by
the paleness of her normally rich-toned skin that she was afraid.

Parker glared
at Momma until she took her feet off the table. His voice was low and echoed
around the room as he read the charges against us. He spoke quickly about me, his
language formal to the point of stupidity, but it took him minutes to get done
with Momma.

"Do
you dispute these charges?" Parker asked.

"I
want to know what you're going to do about it."

"That
depends," he said.

"On
what?" Momma raised her chin high.

"When
did the child arrive at Perseus Two?"

Momma
crossed her arms over her chest and closed her mouth tightly. The executive
sitting closest to us on the left side of the table leaned over to Momma and
whispered, "Being an ass isn't going to help you, Naureen. Either of
you."

"Don't
be such a lawyer, Ethan," Momma spat. I had no idea what a lawyer was, but
it sounded like the opposite of sunshine the way Momma said it.

"Very
well, if there are no mitigating factors," Parker said.

But
before he could speak again Momma interjected. "She's been here twelve
years."

The
crowd around us made a simultaneous sound of sucking in air; it startled me. As
I looked around I got the feeling it had been a spontaneous action because they
were all looking at each other in surprise.
How could so many people do the
same thing at the same time without someone directing it?
And then I
realized they were expressing a common emotion. They were surprised.
Surprised
by how long I'd been in the Rock?
How stupid. The Rock was huge, monstrous —
I knew that from my third shift explorations with Momma. There were plenty of places
to hide things, all kinds of things. Momma's thin Journal was full them.

"How
did she arrive?"

Momma
smirked. "By spaceship."

Someone
laughed in the distance, but Parker ignored it. "Crew shuttle or cargo boat?"

"Does
it really matter?"

"The
company has directed me to ascertain the manner used to convey this stowaway to
Perseus Two."

"Bullshit,"
Momma said as she leaned forward. "The Company doesn't give a rat's ass
that she's here, much less how she got here. You know it. I know it."
Momma motioned to the crowd of people surrounding us. "They know it."

I
snickered at the thought of anything's butt being used as currency until Momma
reached over and silenced me with a touch. She glared down the length of the
table at Parker as if daring him to disagree with her about the Company.

"The
Company issues strict guidelines for congress aboard the Rock. They provide
minimum but adequate supplies for mandatory personnel and not one bit
more."

"And
that's why it took you twelve years to realize she was here: all those missing
rations, unexplained water shortages, rampant power drains." She shook her
head in disgust. "Quit hiding behind the Company. As long as we meet ore
quotas,
metal at the dock on time
, they couldn't care less what happens
to any of us." She punctuated her last statement by looking around,
meeting those few eyes that would meet hers.

"It's
up to me, as the Commander, to implement all aspects of the Charter with
assistance from the Governors," Parker said. "We uphold the rules or
chaos will overcome."

"I
know how things work, how they really work. It's my job to reconcile every kilogram
on and off this Rock. I have Ledgers full of rules bent to nearly broken, for
years, and somehow I don't see this chaos you fear so badly."

Each one
of the white-suited Governors at the table started fidgeting. I knew that Momma
must have something in her thin Ledger about each of them. Contraband alcohol, illegal
recreational drugs, unapproved electronics, banned entertainment modules that
weren't available to download through company frequencies. But Parker didn't
fidget. Momma's thin Ledger held no sway with him.

Momma
took her tone down a notch, "Heaven knows the Rock isn't an easy place to live.
It's not natural, not healthy, nothing at all like home. The work is dangerous,
our lives depend on redundant life support systems and the favorable trajectory
of a million asteroids hurling around out there. If it takes a bent rule, now
and again, to carry us through to our homebound dates, so what?"

The
woman sitting to Parker's right spoke up, "But she's a person, not a liter
of whiskey."

"Yes,
that's my point, she's a person." Momma reached over and held my hand.
"She's the person I need to get through this hell and come out the other
side with some sanity. I'm grateful for the day she arrived in a Stasis Pod, stuffed
into the nose cone of one of the supply boats. I don't know who smuggled her
here. No one ever claimed her; so I took her in and raised her as my own."

"You
have no idea whose child she is?" Parker asked.

A voice
from the crowd behind him yelled out, "She's Mary's daughter. Mary
McDonald."

The room
erupted into chatter. As Parker banged his open hand on the table, trying to
quiet things down, I stood up and tried to see who had spoken. The guards
shoved me back into my seat, knocking my breath away.
Mary McDonald
. I
had a real mom out there and her name was Mary McDonald.

Parker
motioned to a guard who plunged into the still noisy crowd and returned with a
tall, thin, sandy-haired man in tow. The guard forced him to stand next to
Parker's chair.

"McDonald?"
Parker asked.

"No
sir," the man answered. "Mary's dead, sir."

"How
do you know this child is McDonald's?"

"She's
the spittin' image, sir." Murmurs of agreement came from the part of the crowd
that looked like me.

Parker
dismissed him, and then looked to the woman sitting at his right. She consulted
her TechPad. "McDonald, Mary A. Contract inception date: 24/3/2041.
Arrived Perseus Two on 6/6/2041. Contracted for fifteen years. Killed by
outgassing in mid-2043, body lost to space. Next of kin: minor daughter,
unreachable."

"Outgassing?"
I asked Momma quietly.

"Gas
pocket deep inside the Rock. Sometimes the drills hit one and the power of it
blows everything out the nearest lock." Momma bowed her head. "I
remember that one. A couple of weeks before you came to us. Fifteen people
died. Quick. I'm sure she didn't suffer."

Parker's
voice roared over the background noise. "Why didn't you report this child
when she arrived?" he asked Momma.

"The
truth?"

"This
is a fact-finding inquiry," he said, pleased with himself.

"I
knew you'd put her out the nearest airlock." Momma's chin was sticking out
again. "Quietly, so no one would ever know."

"How
dare you..."

"And
then you'd offer me one of your white suits," she shouted over him, glaring
around the table at his Governors. "Figuring that would buy my silence, subdue
my conscience. It would be like she never existed. I couldn't do that. Not
then. Not ever."

That big
old room, with all those people in it, went silent. So quiet I could hear the
drills vibrating through the rock — in the middle of all this, someone was
still churning out the ore, digging after the treasure buried down deep in the
Rock to keep the Company happy.

I was
horrified by Momma's suggestion that the Commanding Officer would send someone
to their death by putting them out the airlock. Momma and Parker locked glares
across the table, a fierce battle of wills that neither looked ready to back
down from.

"So
what do we do now?" Momma asked, without averting her eyes.

"Governors?"
Parker asked, equally unwilling to look away.

The
first speaker sat halfway down the table. "We could send her back to Earth
on the next crew transport."

"And
what do we do with her in the meantime?" Parker asked, still staring Momma
down.

"I
don't know," came the answer.

"And
who's going to stay here past their homebound date so this stowaway can take
their place on the shuttle. Anyone?" Parker asked, finally breaking the
stare to look around the room. "No volunteers?"

No one
made a sound.

A second
idea came from across the table. "She could be trained to take over her late
mother's position, fulfill the rest of McDonald's contract."

"The
job has long been filled by a new worker," the woman next to Parker
answered.

"Why
not just leave well enough alone?" Momma asked. "This colony has
functioned just fine with an extra mouth to feed for twelve years. We'll teach
her critical skills so she can act as back-up to others on their tasks, and in
the meantime she can do menial work."

"You
know that's not possible," Parker said.

Ice-cold
shivers raced up my spine. For a minute I considered how it might feel to be
jettisoned from the Rock like so much garbage. I knew the science, even in the
cold of space my blood would boil from exposure to zero pressure in about 19
seconds.

"You
mean to put me out," I said. My lower lip quivered against my will and hot
tears rolled down my cheeks. The bully at the other end of the table wanted me
dead, and he looked like he had the power to make it happen.

"You
aren't even supposed to be here, young lady."

"I
didn't smuggle myself."

"It
doesn't matter. Your presence here is a latent risk to us all. You and your
'Momma' have perpetrated a crime on every person in the Rock, for twelve years.
What would you have us do?"

"Put
her out!" came a shout from the far corner of the room. The idea sparked
through the crowd, catching a supporter in its grasp here and there. They were
a noisy minority and they joined their voices as they yelled, "Put her
out! Put her out!"

I tucked
my feet up on the chair and wrapped myself in a little ball against the hate
and rage in their words. I'd never done anything to hurt any of them, yet they
wanted to extinguish my life in the vacuum of space.

A
high-pitched whistle pierced the quickly disorganizing chant — I yanked my head
up — and a single voice shouted, "You can't, she's pregnant."

The
chant died, hushed as the word pregnant rippled through the room. Parker's head
dropped nearly to the table.

"Momma?"
I asked.

"Shhh,
Honey-Girl. Just wait." The tension in Momma told me she was surprised. Only
three people in the Rock knew I was pregnant, and that voice couldn't have been
Auntie Pria's.

Sheng
Tian shoved his way through the crowd to the foot of the table where Momma and
I sat. Stunned, I couldn't do or say anything. I searched his face trying to
decide why he'd be so stupid, so brave, so insane as to put himself in the
middle of this mess. Moments later, I noticed Auntie Pria standing right behind
him, her hand on his shoulder.

"Your
child, son?" Parker asked.

I silently
willed Sheng Tian to say no, to stay out of this, but in a proud voice he
claimed our baby in front of everyone in the Rock. Brave. Stupid. Wonderful.

"You
realize you've just confessed to committing a crime?"

"No,
sir." Sheng Tian stood tall. "I've studied the Charter, my employment
contract and my holy writings. There's nothing in any of those documents
ascribing criminal action to intercourse, conception or giving birth to a child
in Perseus Two."

Parker
frowned and looked first to the woman next to him who shrugged her shoulders.
Then he looked to "Ethan," the man Momma had accused of being a
lawyer. Ethan shook his head and then looked down at the table.

"Nevertheless,
young man, you failed to report a stowaway in the Rock."

"He
didn't know I was a stowaway," I said, giving the partial truth with more
confidence that I ought to.

Parker
didn't even look at me; he stayed focused on Sheng Tian. "How do you
propose to deal with the situation?"

"With
all respect, sir. You need to let her stay."

"And,
what, have two unexpected mouths to feed? Raise the child like some kind of damned
station mascot?" He laughed at me.

"Why
not?" Momma challenged.

"It's
against the rules."

"What
rules?"

"The
Charter."

"The
Charter was written by thirty planetside lawyers. Thirty sexually-frustrated
suits in a conference room in a sixty-story skyscraper in a city next to the
spaceport. Thirty shareholders, greedy bastards." Momma voice cracked as
she yelled. "Thirty people who can take their children or grandchildren to
the park and play in the sunshine any time they want."

The
noise in the crowd grew. Parker shouted over them all, "The Charter is
written for our protection. All of our protection. It cannot be changed."

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