Read A Thing As Good As Sunshine Online

Authors: Juliet Nordeen

A Thing As Good As Sunshine (5 page)

"It
can," Sheng Tian said.

"It
must," Momma said.

"It
cannot." Parker used a tone similar to Momma's dealing-with-punks-voice
and it drove the crowd to near silence. He steepled his fingers and closed his
eyes in thought.

Even
though he was my enemy, my mortal enemy it seemed, I felt a little bit sorry
for him. I knew how hard Momma's job was, keeping track of all the stuff that
got people through their daily slog in the Rock. Parker's job had to have been
harder — he didn't have to deal with
stuff
, he had to deal with
people
.
Sometimes when I was little girl I fantasized about growing-up and being in
charge, how I'd change all the rules so that little girls could go wherever
they wanted and befriend whomever they liked. But as I watched him decide my
fate I knew I would hate to be Commanding Officer. My life was in his hands,
but so were the lives of every person in the Rock.

As we
waited to hear Parker's judgment the commotion in the room stayed at a hushed
murmur. They all wanted to hear what he'd say as much as I did. Sheng Tian's
hand stayed on my shoulder the entire time, but I dared not look at him for fear
that I would cry.

After
two minutes of contemplation Parker laid his hands on the table in front of
him. "Young lady, I know this isn't your fault. Nor is it Ms. Abdul's — in
theory. Given the situation, I understand the choices she made, however ill-advised.
Therefore, Ms. Naureen Abdul, I sentence you to 400 hours community service and
a fine equivalent to one year's salary."

Momma
frowned as the crowd reacted; it was a tough punishment, but nothing that would
crack-the-nut
, as she would say. A fair judgment. She reached over and
squeezed my hand and my heart leapt to hope that he might have taken Momma's
advice and act as fairly toward me.

"This
Rock and everyone aboard are my responsibility. 1,680 souls," Parker
continued. "You, however, little girl are not my problem. Neither is that
unborn child. My chief concern, my only concern, must be for the integrity and
the safety of the legitimate crew of this facility. The rules must be upheld or
this Rock will fall into chaos. I'm sorry..."

My heart
pounded against my ribs and I couldn't breathe.

Parker
stood. "It is my decision that you will be placed in a stasis pod until
the arrival of the next supply ship and then you shall be returned to Earth the
same way you arrived."

Arguments
broke out among the white suits at the table and carried into the crowd behind
them. Some supported Parker, others backed Momma and me, and others shouted
concern for my unborn baby. People spit as they yelled, poked each other in the
chest, and hurled curses against gods, ancestors and generations not yet born.
I'd never been exposed to so much anger, suspicion and fear in my life.

"Momma?"

Her jaw
hung open in disbelief until Parker stood and a pair of guards in tight-fitting
black jumpsuits flanked him for the walk out of the huge room.

"You
unbelievable bastard!" Momma jumped up and tried to follow Parker but got
shoved back into her chair. She opened her mouth again but curse words quickly
gave way to gibberish. Auntie Pria rushed to wrap her arms around Momma.

"Momma?"
I screamed as my little world flipped inside out. As frightening as everything
in the last few shifts had been, this was worse. "Momma, I have to go back
to Earth?"

I did
not remember Earth. I didn't have any memories before living with Momma in her
unit. There was no one for me back on the planet, nothing and no one. Everyone
who mattered to me lived in the Rock — Momma, Auntie, Sheng Tian — and they had
contracts binding them to it for years and years. They couldn't leave and now I
couldn't stay. Parker's decision was the cruelest choice he could have made.

I'd
rather be put out the airlock.

Sheng
Tian pulled me out of my thoughts as he knelt by my side and took my cuffed
hands in his. "We'll fight it. I have friends who know people... I'll
contact the Company myself... I won't let this happen."

I could
tell by the way he laid his head in my lap that his bluster was worth no more
than the air it took to say it. Momma and Auntie's gossiping over the years taught
me that maybe someone at the Governor's level could exert that kind of
influence on Parker, but Momma obviously couldn't — even with her thin Ledger —
and he'd never bend that far for a Driller cum Navigator.

Though I
loved Sheng Tian, and I appreciated he wanted to mean the things he said, I
found in the moment that I didn't love him enough. I wanted my Momma. I pulled
away from him, buried my face in Momma's shoulder, and flung my shackled arms
around her and Auntie Pria. We soaked each others' hair with our tears.

I felt Sheng
Tian pull away but did not watch him go. The mayhem surrounding us ebbed and
then finally died. Eventually we three, and a dozen guards, were all that
remained of the biggest, scariest, angriest crowd I'd ever seen in my life.
Auntie Pria settled herself, exhausted, into the chair recently held by
Governor Ethan, the lawyer.

Momma
struggled with her cuffs to gather her long hair away from her blotchy face, and
somehow managed to pull it back and secure it in a knot. "What are the
chances she'll make it back to Earth?" Momma asked Auntie.

I
swallowed hard. That idea didn't go down well, it stuck sideways in my throat
like a drill wedged against choke-rock. When Parker had spoken my sentence I
hadn't even considered the possibility that I wouldn't survive to be all alone
on a planet I didn't care about. After all, I had gotten here okay as a toddler.

Auntie
frowned as she thought. "The technology hasn't advanced much in the last ten
years. Without the pregnancy, I'd say eighty-twenty. But with a fetus drawing
strength from her body, especially as low as her body-fat is already, I don't
know. Most of the stasis studies come from the military and those folks are
almost as anti-child as the Company."

"Guess."
Momma wasn't dealing with a punk, but I realized she needed Auntie to answer.

So did
I.

Auntie
considered. Hesitated. Stayed quiet.

"Better
than fifty-fifty?" Momma asked.

Auntie
shook her head.

"Twenty
five percent?"

"Maybe."
As a medic, Auntie was experienced at giving bad news, but this broke her and
she had to look away from both of us.

My head
shook slowly without me asking it to. I couldn't believe the future Parker had
damned me to. I'd be drowned in liquid oxygen, chilled to hibernating-cold, stuffed
in a tube where I might or might not maintain my awareness (or dream), wedged
into the nose cone of a computer-driven, cargo boat full of billions of dollars
of ore, hurled across space for months, plunged through a burning atmosphere
into Earth's gravity well. After splashing into a body of water so big I
couldn't even imagine it — thousands and thousands of times bigger than Perseus
Two itself — a planetbound ship would retrieve the whole thing and tow it to a
continent almost as big as the ocean. A continent full of people, of whom not a
single one would care a lick about what happened to me or my unborn child. And
now Auntie said I had a one in four chance of it turning out that well.

More
than likely I'd die out there. After the boat splashed down on Earth, and the
company had taken its ore, some stranger would find my dead, emaciated, naked
body in the stasis tube. And then what? There wouldn't even be anyone to cry
for me.

I no
longer felt sorry for Parker. He was a monster. The worst monster imaginable. I
laughed at myself for ever having pity for him.

"What's
funny, Honey-Girl?" Momma asked.

I shook
my head faster, my disbelief turning to rage. "I won't go that way."

"Honey-Girl,"
Auntie said in her calming tone.

"No."
I banged my fist on the table. "Parker and his Governors can go to hell
first. They're not sending me away from you to die in a frozen tube." I
banged my hand again, harder, and the cuff around my wrist gouged a chip out of
a soft ore vein in the table.

Momma
put her hand over mine. "Stop. Just stop."

She let
my hand go and I picked at the hole I'd made. "What would you do if you
were me?" I asked Momma.

"Here's
what we're going to do," Momma said. "We're going to pull the old
switcheroo. Auntie will sedate you and load you in a dry tube, and then we'll
load another decoy stasis tube full of liquid oxygen on the boat. When the
coast is clear we'll smuggle you out to one of the newly-cut veins where no one
ever goes and set you up out there."

"What
if Parker checks the tube before it loads?" Auntie asked. "Or when
his planetside contacts report the tube empty?"

"I
suppose you have a better idea!" Momma yelled, but in the next breath she
apologized.

I flicked
the little chip of ore down the length of the table, its tinny sound echoing in
the cavernous room. I watched it until it skittered off the edge halfway to
Parker's empty chair.

"I
think I'd rather step out an airlock, finally see the sunshine for
myself."

"No,"
Pria said at the same time Momma said, "You'll see plenty of sunshine on
Earth."

"If
I get there."

"You
will," Momma said.

"You
sound like Sheng Tian trying to tell me he's going to appeal to the Governors,
contact the Company on my behalf," I said. "You don't know for sure
that I'll make it."

Momma
took my hands in hers. "I know that you'll die for certain if you step out
an airlock."

"Maybe
it won't be so bad. Finally, something in my life will be my choice. Something
on my terms."

"But
the baby," Auntie Pria said, tears magnifying her dark eyes.

I knew
from reading about pregnancy on Momma's TechPad that I was supposed to feel
attached to the tiny life growing inside of me — that little miracle that was
half me and half Sheng Tian — but I was too scared of it to feel a hundredth of
the love I felt for Momma. "I'm sorry, Auntie."

We sat
in silence. Momma picked at her nails. Pria sat utterly still. I turned my
attention back to the little hole in the table.

Momma
eventually cleared her throat and said, "I'm coming with you." Then she
called to the nearest guard and asked its masked face to get a message to the
Commanding Officer.

*****

Momma,
Auntie and I fought for three shifts over my decision, and Momma's, while
Parker consulted the Governors about the
implications of such a request
.
Eventually Parker agreed he had no standing to prevent our choice and even
provided one last meal in deference to some stupid planetside tradition. I was
too upset to eat even a spoonful of protein-enhanced soup so I begged of him another
final request.

In the
end, a half-dozen space-suited guards and Auntie Pria in an emergency vacuum bubble
escorted Momma and me to the receiving dock. It had the biggest airlock and
there were currently no boats docked there. I watched the stars crawl toward a
stop outside the door's large window — Parker had agreed to spin-down the Rock
for ten minutes, even though it meant losing gravity for everyone inside. We
all grabbed onto rails to keep from floating aimlessly around the bay.

The
immensity of what waited on the other side of the cargo door shook my resolve
until I thought about being drowned, stuffed in a tube, and loaded onto a boat
of ore. That had been Parker's justice. This would be mine.

Sunlight
flooded the cargo bay as I floated through a beam of intense, yellow light. I
couldn't look away from its source, beauty beyond description. The skin on my
arms and legs not covered by my tunic grew warm in the most pleasant way —
reminding me of a hug, or a fluffy tomcat, or messing around in the laundry pod.

I
finally got a hint about sunshine and it steeled my resolve.

One of
the guards activated the airlock control. Vacuum warning lights and sirens
flooded the bay as the air streamed out through vents surrounding the door.

Our hair
whipped in the wind as Momma clamped her arm around mine. Her hands shook where
mine were still. "We'll do this together," she said.

But it
wasn't going to happen that way.

I looked
toward Auntie Pria — feet hooked under the rail, arms out to steady herself
inside an inflated cocoon of rippling plastic — and she nodded that she was
ready. Without any warning, I pushed Momma toward her at the same moment she
unzipped the plastic shell and pulled Momma inside. Any other way it wouldn't
have worked, but surprise and the lack of gravity kept Momma unbalanced as
Auntie wrapped one arm around her and zipped the shell up. Momma fought her,
but Auntie had promised me she would not let her go.

"No!"
Momma yelled as I floated toward the slowly opening door alone. "I'm
coming with you."

"Momma,
you have to stay," I yelled above the wind.

The air
in the room grew thinner and I had to concentrate to draw one last deep breath
from the air streaming past me, carrying me toward the airlock. My foot brushed
the edge of the wall at the threshold and my body started to spin toward the
light.

I waved
good-bye to Momma and Auntie and yearned for the sunlight.

It took
all the stretch I had to reach for the edge of sliding door as I neared it to
stop my spin. I barely caught a fingertip, bending it and pulling tendons, but
I held myself, facing toward the sunshine as I floated out beyond the
boundaries of the Perseus Two, the only home I'd ever known.

As the
air around me dissipated, the cold rushed in — spears of ice stabbing me all
over. My pulse thrummed in my ears, pressed against my skin, and bulged at my
eyes until I could no longer keep them open. Squeezing them shut and pressing
against them with my fingers, I fought to keep my last breath inside my body. I
knew there wasn't enough time to even think all of the wonderful things I felt
about the power of sunshine. Its warmth on my skin, the way that contrasted
with the cold shadows pricking at my back, the way it called me forward to
sleep in blissful peace, the way it made me feel whole in a way I'd never felt
before.

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