Empire (6 page)

“Papa is…” she bit her lip, “…
was
a master shipfitter, and he decided that we should have a vacation away from home this year, to get away from the yards for a while. He told Mama that we should go to Earth. He wanted us to see Paris, a place he always talked about – he had grown up there – but we had never seen it, Mama and I having been born on La Seyne. He never stopped talking about the wonderful tower,
La Tour Eiffel
that had been built before the days of artificial gravity and load lifters. He spoke of the lights at night, of the buildings that dated back to the times of great kings and queens. And so we boarded a starliner for Earth. There were three other ships in our little convoy, two merchantmen and a light cruiser.”

Reza saw her eyes mist over, her gaze somewhere far away.
God
, he thought,
how many times have I had to see this? And how many more times before I can leave this godforsaken place?
Under the table, he sought out one of her hands and took it in his. She held it tightly.

She nodded as her mind sifted through the images of times she wished she could forget. “We were only two days out from La Seyne when the convoy was attacked. I do not know how many enemy ships there were, or exactly what happened. I suppose it does not matter. Our ship, the
Il de France
, was badly hit soon after the alarms sounded, and Papa went aft to the engineering spaces to try and help them.” Her lower lip trembled as a tear streaked down her face. “We never saw him after that.”

She paused a moment, her eyes closed as she remembered her father’s parting hug to her and her mother before he ran down the companionway with the frightened young petty officer. “The ship kept getting hit like it was being pounded with a great hammer. Either the bridge was destroyed, or perhaps the speaker system was damaged, because the order to abandon ship never came, even though we knew for sure that the hull had been breached in many places. Mama, who herself had never been on a ship before, did not seem scared at all, like she had been through it all many times in her head as she worked in the kitchen at home, making Papa’s supper. When the normal lights went out and the emergency lights came on, she said only, ‘We are leaving,’ and took me by the hand to where one of the lifeboats was still docked.” A sob caught her breath, but she forced herself to get on with it. “But the boat was already filled, except for one seat. But the aisle down the middle was clear. ‘Look, Mama,’ I told her, ‘there is plenty of room for us.’

“But I did not know that these boats had no artificial gravity, and that anyone not in a seat might be killed during the launch. I did not hear the warning the boat was giving in Standard. There was so much noise coming from our dying ship, and Mama spoke only French. She made me take the seat and she knelt in the aisle, praying, when the door closed. I… I blacked out after that. And when I woke up, she… she…”

Nicole collapsed in wracking sobs, the guilt and loss that had been eating away at her heart finally exposed. But a part – be it ever so tiny – of the burden had been lifted from her shoulders. She felt the comforting touch of caring hands as the others extended their sympathy, and Reza wrapped his arm around her shoulder, drawing her to him.

“It’s all right,” he said softly. “It wasn’t your fault–”

“But the warning,” she gasped angrily. “I knew Standard! I should have listened! I could have saved her!”

“And where would that have left your mom?” asked Tamil, an acne-scarred girl with hair cropped close to her skull. “Back on the ship to get spaced when the hull gave way?”

“I would have stayed with her!” Nicole shouted defiantly. “At least we all would have been together.”

Tamil shook her head. “She wouldn’t have let you, girl, and you know it.” While she was not very old when her own mother had died, Tamil remembered her mother well, and how she had saved her daughter’s life at the cost of her own. “She would have knocked you over the head and strapped you into that last seat to save you, if it came down to it. She loved you. She wouldn’t have let you die.”

That remark was met with nods and murmurs of agreement from the others.

Nicole suddenly understood that a consensus had been reached, and the look of sympathy in their eyes was joined by something akin to forgiveness. It was a tacit understanding that Fate was to blame. There was nothing she could have done to avert the tragedy that had taken her family away. More than that, they had accepted her. She was one of them now, if she wanted to be. Thinking back to what Muldoon had done, she gave thanks to God for her good fortune.

“Listen,” Reza told her, “the pain… never really goes away. But you learn to deal with it.” His voice was nearly lost in the background banter and clatter of nearly a thousand spoons scraping the remnants of the evening meal from the trays of House 48, her new home. “You have to, if you want to get out of this lousy place in one piece. If you don’t, people like Muldoon and some of the kids here will use you and throw you away like a toilet wipe. And you’ve got friends now to help.”

“Besides,” said a short, stocky red-haired girl two seats down from Reza, “you’re a short timer. What are you, fourteen, or so?” Nicole nodded. “Jesus, Nicole, you’ve got less than a year here until you’re fifteen and you can apply for one of the academies. You look like you’re pretty sharp and in good shape. They’ll probably take you. If you don’t,” she shrugged, “you’ll just have to wait it out until you’re seventeen.”

“Fifteen,” she lamented. “It is forever.” The thought of spending the next six months here until her fifteenth birthday was appalling, but having to wait until she was seventeen was simply unbearable. Strangely, applying to one of the academies was a thought that had never occurred to her in her former life. La Seyne was very traditional, clinging to many of the ancient Western traditions brought by its early settlers. Most of the women born there spent their lives caring for their husbands and raising their children, any thoughts of becoming a “professional” being scorned as sacrilegiously self-serving. But, to get out of here in six months instead of two and a half years, she was more than willing to abandon tradition.

“It’s a lot less than I’ve had to spend on this rock,” Reza said darkly, his pre-pubescent voice carrying the resignation of the damned. His eyes blazed so fiercely that they burned her with shame for thinking that the paltry time she would have to spend here was unendurable. Reza had been here for some time before she had arrived, and would still be here after she had gone.

“Please,” she choked, suddenly flushing with empathy for him, for all of them, “forgive me. I did not mean it that way.” She reached out and gently stroked his cheek with her hand. “
Mon Dieu
,” she whispered, “how horrible.”

Reza shrugged, his face dropping its melancholy veil. “It could be worse,” he said. “At least it’s not like for some of the really little kids who came here without even remembering or knowing their parents, like little Darrow over there.” A tiny black boy a few seats down nodded heartily and gave her an enchanting smile. “At least we knew our parents and can remember them.”

Nicole nodded thoughtfully as Reza turned his attention back to the others.

“Does anybody else have anything?” He looked around the table like a chairman of the board or councilman, his eyes intense pools of jade. “Okay, that’s it, then, except to remind you that we’re on alert for Muldoon and his slugs. Nobody goes anywhere alone, so stay with your blockmates. Jam your doors when you go to sleep and don’t open them again until your team leader – Thad, Henson, or Charles – comes to pick you up in the morning. Little kids, if you hear the fire alarm, don’t leave your room unless you recognize one of our voices outside and we give you the right signal on the door. Muldoon pulled that trick last year and nailed a girl from Screamer’s bunch. He’s going to be gunning for us for a while this time, and there won’t be another load of newbies for him to go after for another two weeks, so watch out and stick together.”

With a murmur of acknowledgments, the children quickly got up from the table. Moving in formation with almost military precision, they dumped their trays in the waiting bins and followed their team leaders to the bunkhouse, leaving only Reza and Nicole behind.

“Should we not go with them?” she asked, wondering if the two of them would be safe, alone.

“No,” he told her, gesturing for her to follow as he got up from the table and headed toward the tray bin. “We’re not going back with them tonight. They’ll be all right, but I think it’s too dangerous for us to go back to the bunkhouse until tomorrow, at least.”

“But,” Nicole stammered, “where will we sleep?”

“Trust me,” Reza told her. “I have a place Muldoon can’t get into very easily.”

He led her outside, following a path that led them through the various buildings that made up the House 48 complex. It comprised the bunkhouse itself, which was really a collection of dormitories; the school, which was only occupied during the winter, when even Muldoon could not bear to herd the children into the fields; the tiny medical clinic; and the administration building. The last, ironically, was also the largest, as it also housed House 48’s shelter, visible from the outside by the universal red and black striped blast portal that was kept lit at all times. The exact same buildings could be found at any of the other Houses dotting Hallmark’s surface. All of them were pre-fabricated, tough, cheap and easy to build and maintain. They were true modern architectural wonders, and all ugly as sin.

Up ahead, Nicole could make out a squat structure at the end of the path, the last of House 48’s buildings that didn’t seem to fit in with the others. Light showed through the slender windows, evenly distributed around the circumference of the octagonal building, reaching from about waist-high nearly to the roof over the second story.

“My home away from home,” Reza announced, gesturing toward the revolving door. It looked almost like an airlock, and was intended to keep the dust of the fields out of the building.

“What is it?” Nicole asked as Reza ushered her through the door, the cylinder swishing closed behind them.

“It’s the House 48 Library,” he answered.

Nicole was about to laugh until she realized that Reza was completely serious. As they emerged through the door and into the light of the interior, she saw the look of unabashed wonder on his face. Her smile slipped as she thought of how many times he must have come through that door, and yet his expression was as if this was the very first.

“Reza,” she asked, following after him into what must have been the lobby, “what is so important here?” She looked around at the meager collection of holo displays and the disk racks. “These devices are very nearly antique!”

Reza favored her with a quizzical look, as if her question had revealed a stratum of incredible, if easily forgivable, ignorance. “This,” he said disdainfully, pointing to the disk racks and study carrels arrayed around the lobby, “is junk: old periodicals, some of the new literature, and other stuff. I stopped bothering with that a long time ago.” He led her around the front desk as if he owned the place, which she suspected he might, in a way. Then he punched in an access code to a locked door. She noted that there appeared to be no one else here, a thought that was not entirely comforting. “This,” he explained quietly, “is why this place is important.”

Pushing open the door, they found themselves in a darkened room, but there was still enough light for Nicole to see angular shapes that radiated away into the darkness. Reza closed and locked the door behind them. Only then did he switch on a light.

“Oh,” Nicole gasped. In the gentle light that flooded the room, she saw row after row of books, real books, with pages and bindings. Some were made of the micro plastic that had found its way into favor over the years, but most were made of genuine paper, the exposed edges yellowed with age, their covers and bindings carefully protected with a glistening epoxy sealant.

“Besides being real antiques,” Reza told her, “and having some monetary value for anyone who can waste the transport mass charge to haul them around, they can be a real brain saver in this place.” He picked up a volume, seemingly at random – although he knew by heart the place of every book in the room – and held it up for her to see.
Hamlet
, the book’s binding said, followed by some strange symbols and then the author’s name: Shakespeare.

She took the book from him, careful not to drop it. It was terribly old, and one of the few such books she had ever seen. Every major publisher had long since done away with physical books. Electronic media were so much cheaper and more efficient.

But it was not the same, as her own father, a devoted book reader himself, had often told her. Watching the action on a holo screen left too little to the imagination, he had said once, holding one of his own precious volumes up as if it were on an imaginary pedestal. The screen fed the mind, but its calories were empty ones, bereft of the stuff on which thought depended. She had thought him quite comical at the time, her own young life having evolved around the holo images that invaded their home daily. But perhaps, as was most often the case, his words had more than just a kernel of truth in them.

“You asked why this place is so important to me,” Reza said, watching as she turned the pages, his ears thrilling to the sound. “I’ll tell you why. When you come in from the fields, you eat, you sleep, and then you get up to go to the fields again. Over and over, for as long as you have until you can leave here.

“And every day that you let yourself do just that, just the stuff you have to do to get by, even when you’re so tired you can’t see straight, you die just a little bit. Not much, not so much that you notice that day, or even the next, but just a little. Your mind starts eroding, and you start forgetting about anything that you used to think was interesting or important, whether anyone else thought it was or not. Pretty soon, all the useless crap that we do here becomes more and more important to you, as if it really had some meaning.” He spat out the last few words, disgust evident on his face and in his voice. “After a while, you start finding yourself in conversations about how many kilos of rocks people dug up. There’s even an official contest. Did you know that? People talk about how many blisters so-and-so got, and who had sex with whom, what kind of stunt Muldoon pulled today, on and on and on. Remember the porridge you liked so much?” Nicole grimaced, the tasteless paste still coagulating in her stomach. “That’s what your brain starts turning into around here. Mush.