Unwelcome Bodies (8 page)

He storms out, just like he did last time, and the time before, and the ten times before. The roadie strokes Callie’s close-cropped hair and asks, “Do you need any help?”

“No, I’ve got it.”

The roadie takes the laser with her as she leaves the dressing room.

And Callie is alone with her costumes and her wigs and her paints. She picks up a makeup brush, stares at herself in the mirror with eyes as green as the lost seas, and begins to paint waves on her sunken cheeks.

In half an hour, she walks out, transformed, and nods to the crew.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Straight from the Albany Protectorate, let’s give a warm Providence welcome to Undine!”

The lights come up, and she’s resplendent in water tones on her blue divan, where she spends the next ninety minutes whispering out love songs for forgotten oceans. Between numbers, the crowd reverently passes tiny plastic water bottles up to the stage. They only contain an inch of water each, maybe less, but they’re precious gifts, dribbed and drabbed from their daily rations.

For that ninety minutes, the world is once again wet.

And then the lights go out, and Undine again becomes Callie—small, parched, and alone. The roadies collect all of the offerings and help Callie off the stage. There is a crush of groupies waiting for her outside her dressing room, some waving full daily ration bottles as enticement, and she hesitates, her body screaming out for more water. But she has given all she can for one night. She has nothing left to trade. So she shakes her head and goes into the dressing room, alone, as always.

Callie crawls onto the sofa, nestles the bottles to her bosom, pulls a blanket around her, and dreams of floods.

* * * *

“How dare you?”

She opens her eyes to see the familiar argument brewing between her brother and her manager.

Jeremy shrugs expansively and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“This happens every time. You can’t leave her alone at high tide. She needs protection.”

“From who, herself?”

“Yes.”

“Look, Owen, your twin is a grown woman. She doesn’t need a babysitter. If she wants to slice her wrists open—”

Her brother jabs a finger into her manager’s chest so hard that she can hear it thunk. “You encourage her. You like the publicity. You’re a fiend, Jeremy. An utter fiend.”

Callie props herself up on one elbow, the tiny bottles sliding down her chest and puddling by her side. “Owen, leave Jeremy alone.”

Owen shoots the manager one last glare, then snarls, “Get out.”

Jeremy raises his hands in mock surrender and leaves.

And Owen sits down at Callie’s hip, carefully avoiding all the precious plastic bottles, recycled from the desolate world outside. Some once held fizzy drinks, some cough syrup, still others carried tiny amounts of liquor on the airplanes that once criss-crossed the sky. They’re all relics of a world long gone, recycled to keep this world alive.

Owen clasps her hands tightly and stares down at her wrists, the new scars standing out vividly against the old. “You have to stop playing full moon shows,” he says.

“I need to play with the tides. You know that.”

He presses her palms together, his own hands cradling hers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here last night. There was a sandstorm. They canceled my train. I would have met you in Albany and come out here with you, but you know how work is.”

“Hey, I understand.” She kisses his fingertips. “Your work’s important.” Owen is part of a team of scientists working to find a way to restart the manufacturing economy without using water, or at the very least, without losing any. Their ultimate goal is to get the space program back online so they can bring back water from other solar bodies to replenish the oceans. Water is ripe for the taking on the Moon, Mars, and the comets. Many think this project is Earth’s only hope.

Owen stands and pulls Callie to her feet along with him. “Come on. Let’s take you home.”

“Hold on,” she says, and scoops up all of the bottles, cradling them in her arms like the baby she will never be allowed to have. Some of the groupies must have left their ration bottles for her, because there’s a small stash of them by the door. Callie carefully collects them all and places them in an old hard-sided suitcase.

“More for the tub?” Owen asks.

“Mm hmm.”

“Do you have any grand plans for it, or—”

“Not particularly.” She knows she shouldn’t lie to her brother. They’ve never kept secrets from each other. But if he knew the thoughts she was entertaining, he’d try to stop her. And between full moons, the thoughts she is entertaining are all that keep her alive.

Owen gestures at the bulging suitcase and asks, “How are you going to get all of that through customs?”

Callie smiles for the first time in days. “Sometimes, it’s good to be a celebrity.” 

* * * *

She tries not to look out the window as the train makes the desolate journey from Providence to Albany, but she can’t help it. Her vision is magnetically drawn to the reality that so horrifies her. The solar-powered train races through ghost town after ghost town, empty buildings jutting starkly into the dusty sky, the tracks following a coast that no longer exists. Every so often, they get close enough to it that she can see what was once the seabed, and Callie bites back tears and turns away. Wasting water is not the way to mourn the oceans.

Her brother looks up from his reader and says, “It’s times like this that I understand the Angry Earthers.”

Callie clasps her scarred wrists tightly against her chest. “You can’t.”

Owen stares out the window as they pass through what was once New London. “I know there has to be a scientific explanation, but—”

“You just need to keep looking,” Callie says. “You’ll find it.”

Owen shakes his head and looks back down at his reader.

He can’t believe in the Angry Earth Theory. Not Owen. He’s a scientist. He can’t believe that the planet is a sentient being that’s trying to wipe out humanity by taking away all of the water. If even the scientists are entertaining such quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo, then what hope can people like her have?

Callie grabs his forearm with one thin-boned hand. “You’re just saying that, right?”

He opens his mouth, sighs, then says, “Of course I don’t believe that. The view…” He waves his hand at the window. “I just get depressed sometimes. We’ve been hitting some…snags on the project. It’s enough to make you believe in the supernatural.”

“We’ll get the water back.”

“Some day, yes.” He smiles at Callie, plucking her hand from his arm and clasping it tightly. “You just need to hang in there, sis. No more high tide melodrama, okay? I mean it this time.”

“I’ll try.”

His smile fades. “Will you? Really?”

Callie nods and looks out the window again. She’ll try, but she can’t promise more than that.

The train turns north for Albany, and the desolation is magnified as they leave the corridor of cities. There is just wind-swept dust, stark terrain, and the occasional storm of debris as the clutter of the former oceans makes its way across land. Bleached-out bath toys bounce off of the train’s windows in a rubbery hail, and Callie shrinks back into her brother’s arms until the assault ends. And then there is nothing again. No trees, no farm houses, nothing but dust.

They pull into the Albany station, wait for the moisturelock to dock with the train, and debark onto the waiting solar bus. It takes them back to the Protectorate—a massive series of vapor-tight bunkers constructed when the water started to vanish. They are all that saved the people inside and their hoarded water from the thirsty masses. All water in the Protectorate is recycled, even the precious water in the air. Not a single puff of vapor is allowed to escape. At least, not on purpose. No system is perfect. Every year, just like in every other hab, a little more water is lost, and there is no way to replenish it.

Callie was born in the bunkers, just eleven minutes after her brother, just moments before the news reports that the very last of the water had vanished. By the time Callie was born, the riots had ended, the arsenals were empty, the governments had long collapsed, and not a creature outside the bunkered cities was left alive. Callie never had to learn to adjust to this dry world. As long as she can remember, she has known how to operate a moisturelock, how to monitor her water consumption to the milliliter, how to identify and repair breaches in the vapor systems, how to keep clean with sonics and chemical scrubs.

But it has never felt natural.

She has never understood why she is so profoundly tidal, why she feels the lost oceans with every cell of her body. Doctors have tried to write it off as depression, or an overactive imagination, or intense self-involvement, but she knows they’re all wrong. She is simply suffering from hydrophilia in the middle of a desert world.

* * * *

“I’ve got a great video idea,” her manager is saying. She has him on linkup. “The Marianas Trench. You wouldn’t actually be there, of course. It’s too dangerous, never mind the fact that no one wants to see you sing in a still suit. But it’d be a hell of a backdrop for Undine, don’t you think?”

“Jeremy, no.” She glares at him from the sofa in her one-room apartment. It is a big room—a corner unit with small, high windows, luxurious for this impoverished world. Most people live in glorified cells clustered around water rationing stations. This is yet another perk of celebrity that she is happy to accept.

“Trust me, it’ll be perfect. You’ll need a new song for it, though.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Come on. You need to capitalize on your image. Think big, Callie. The fans will eat it up.”

She rises to her feet and advances to the screen. “I will not exploit the oceans!”

Jeremy stares at her as if she is a child. “Callie, you can’t exploit something that hasn’t existed for thirty years.”

Callie slaps down hard on the connection, and her manager is gone.

Her brother shuffles in from the sonics, his bathrobe tied loosely at his hips. Despite the green and blue tissue paper she’s put over the windows, Owen looks golden in the diffuse sunlight. He must have gotten all of the beauty that was available in their mother’s womb. She, at thirty, has already been gifted with salt-and-pepper hair, and her skin is so pale that her veins stand out on it like marble. Of course, she might not be so translucent if she didn’t keep bleeding herself.

“Who was that?” Owen asks.

Callie wraps her arms around herself and tries to rub some warmth into her body. “Oh, just Jeremy.”

“You need a new manager. I don’t trust that man. He treats you like a commodity, not an artist.”

“There aren’t a lot of managers to choose from, and he’s got all the right connections.”

“There has to be someone else. Tell you what, I’ll do a little digging on the trip back to the university and see who I can come up with, okay?”

Callie nods, but knows he’ll fail. They do not live in a time that can support much in the way of celebrity, and the number of good agents who can make a living representing them is correspondingly small. “Do you have to go back so soon?” she asks, and tucks cold hands into her armpits. It’s impossible to get warm the first few days after she bleeds.

He shrugs. “Sorry. Work calls.” He actually looks guilty.

“Hey, don’t do that,” she says. “No guilt. You’re doing—”

“—important work. Yes, I know.” He looks down at his bare feet. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out any day now.”

“Any day now,” she parrots. If only she could believe that. If only they’d gotten far enough to announce a launch date. Then she’d have something concrete to hold onto. Then she’d have a reason to want to live through the next high tide. “I just wish your schedule weren’t so inflexible.”

He looks back up at her and shrugs. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

“Oh please. If they really wanted to pay you what you’re worth, they’d give you that breeding license you’ve always wanted. You know, you should find someone to settle down with so you can get started as soon as you get the okay.”

He grimaces, quickly turning it into a fake smile. “Hey, what can you do?” he says. She can tell she’s hit a nerve. Owen has wanted children his whole life. It must be killing him to have made it to thirty without a license. She’s sure he’ll get approved as soon as he finds a partner. He’s educated, employed, and painfully stable.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I shouldn’t—”

“No, that’s okay.” He shifts his weight, and in a strained voice, says, “You know, you should take your own advice. I know you don’t want kids, but you’d be so much happier if you weren’t alone here so much of the time.”

She shrugs and shoots him an awkward grin. “Oh, you know me. I’ve never been much for pairing up.”

“That’s because you’ve never tried. Give it a shot sometime. You just might like it.”

“Owen, I appreciate the concern, but seriously, I couldn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Owen, please. Drop it. Okay?”

“Absolutely not.” He steps forward with an odd intensity to his gaze. “Callie, think about it, maybe you wouldn’t want to kill yourself if you weren’t alone. Maybe you just need someone who loves you.”

“I thought
you
loved me,” she snaps.

He looks wounded. In a small voice, he says, “You know what I mean.”

She hates seeing him this way. But he brought it on himself. He should know better by now. “Look, if you’re so worried, I could come live with you in Stonybrook.”

“I told you, it’s almost impossible to get a visitor’s visa, never mind to get approved for residency. If you were a scientist, it would be one thing—”

“But I’m family, Owen.”

“I already have—” A strange expression crosses Owen’s face. If Callie didn’t know better, she’d think it was panic.

It quickly vanishes, and he raises his hands and says, “Forget it. I’m sorry I brought it up.” He turns and pads barefoot behind the partition that gives his guest bed a modicum of privacy, and from the faint shadow he casts, Callie sees him getting dressed. Twin or not, she feels it’s an invasion of privacy to keep watching, so she turns away to face the only other love in her life.