Eight

I thought today would start out poorly, but it has turned out quite well, in the end.

We had rehydrated eggs and grain porridge again today, which I’m beginning to suspect is the usual breakfast for the Moon Base people. Or maybe visitors get the same things over and over? I can’t imagine it’s great for the body to eat the same substance every single day, unless the porridge is fortified with vitamins. And the softness of the food does help in a close to weightless environment – I’ve noticed a little heartburn recently, which might be due to less gravity helping food remain in my stomach.

Samira still looks sick. I must remember to talk to the infirmary for her tomorrow. No one should stay sick from mild kinetosis.

Speaking of kinetosis, we had another cargo landing instruction this morning, which made us all a little dizzy. When we took a break for lunch, no one said anything – not even Chloe, who said just yesterday that she wanted us to get to know each other better. She seemed so sure about initiating it at the time. I wondered if, perhaps, that was something I should do, as well, but I didn’t have long to consider the problem before we were called back into training. Most of us hadn’t finished our soup – not that it was appetizing, it was some thick umami liquid and I couldn’t tell what it was made from. No wonder asteroid miners are so reverent towards Earth. I can only hope that we’re able to grow better food for ourselves, and we don’t have to live on our stores of Nutriloaves for too long.

Things took a turn for the better, though, just after lunch. I’m pleased to say that our disorienting instruction in landing cargo ships is over, and we’ve moved on to something much more my pace – circuitry! We’ll have a product printer to help us with computer parts, using silk and carbon fiber and spun gold to print everything we need from air filters to circuit boards, so we’ll really just need to know how to spot-weld and fit the pieces together.

I know very little about computers, but I’ve read a great deal, whenever I could get my hands on an old book. Yes, one of the old paper ones, I know. They smell funny, they’re mold factories, and the organic particles used for the pages are not only inefficient, but they can cut into your skin, since they have sharp edges! That said, once you get used to them, the cuts almost never happen, and there’s something endearing about browning pages and fading ink, even if books release toxic particulates.

I’m glad we’ve moved past such manufacturing practices as a society, however. It is so much more efficient to read on a tablet, because of the backlight and ease of access.

But back to computers. Our lives in Rabbah will be governed by our computer systems, from air filtration to light cycles to communication, so it’s important for us to know how to maintain these complex machines. Zariah and Yuda took to the process quite easily, since they’re used to dealing with computer waste, but I am surprised by how well most of us learned the basics of changing a crystal core, soldering the transmitter boards, and even welding the storage cases together. We started in on the basics of Shor-Simon Coding – it’s very basic computer coding, but it’s the platform on which all crystal cores run.

Zariah asked about re-entangling the crystal atoms if necessary, which I thought was a great question. Our Bakalov instructor, however, assured us that we could get replacement crystal cores that would be pre-entangled, because it hardly costs a thing to ship those to and from mining operations on asteroids. Zariah didn’t seem pleased by this answer, though. I saw Yuda lean over and quickly whisper to her.

I wonder how the two of them re-entangled cores on Bainbridge Island. I’ve read plenty in the news, as I know all of you have, about the pirates on Bainbridge, entangling crystal cores with other crystal cores to steal information. I can understand that perhaps this expedition’s planners do not think it would be wise for us to have access to that information or the necessary tools, since we have former Araboa going with us. But, it does seem awfully wasteful to ask for a new crystal when we could fix the one we have.

Maybe Yuda would be able to figure it out. Maybe there’s something about being exposed to computers from a young age that makes the work much easier, more natural? Or maybe she just has a genius for patterns. Budur and Chloe also took to the code, and they both sew from their own patterns, so maybe it is just a pattern recognition issue.

I am sorry to report that, although I enjoyed the lesson, I was not that great at the code myself. What I really liked was learning about the ferrous meshes and how they fit around the crystal cores, the lines of gold running throughout flat boards of superlight polymer and how everything fit together, which was much more like sewing to me.

That lesson by itself was 8 hours long, so we worked a much more traditional 12 hours today. I’ve spent so much time alone in my apartment before leaving for this mission that I had almost forgotten how exhausting a day full of physical labor can be. And yet, we all seemed satisfied with our exhaustion as we entered the empty cafeteria for whatever was left over from dinner.

Over bowls of soupy rice with miso-soy protein, Chloe finally spoke up. She suggested, as she did to me, that we all start looking at each other as one caste, more like equals, instead of separate entities.

I was glad when some of the women nodded. I was surprised that Ihsan was one of them, but less surprised that the Araboa women seemed eager at this proposition. Two of the Ikin looked uncomfortable, and Samira stared into the distance – probably from illness more than anything else.

Vivien, a woman with deep-hued skin covered in callouses and scars, sat back in her chair and squinted at Chloe. When Chloe continued to return the stare without backing down, Vivien said, “I’ve worked hard all of my life, on farms, with animals, back-breaking labor like none of the rest of you have ever performed. Why should I respect any of you as equals, when so many of you are just playing a game with this?”

Haven leaned heavily on the table so that she could see everyone, despite her short stature. “We’re all here because Breathe Easy thought our skills were appropriate,” she said. “There were thousands of applicants for this mission, and only 12 of us have been chosen for the first launch, so believe me, no one here thinks this is a child’s game.”

Vivien’s deep laugh resonated scorn through the cafeteria. “I know some of you thought you gardened, or mended clothes, or cooked, but besides Natsuki, Samira, Ihsan, and myself, none of you have had to really fight for survival. You haven’t had to fight through physical exhaustion from a job to fight for your dinner and a place to sleep. Your jobs always gave you what you needed – Ikin jobs are not so kindly.”

Both Araboa sneered at Vivien, who sneered back. Durada stood up before the fight went further. It was strange to see such a quiet, unassuming Bakalov become enraged, but Durada’s face was puffy with suppressed emotion. After a few deep breaths, she said: “I loved my Ikin workers, I provided for them as much as I could. Food, clothing, better shelter than the tents they came to me with. Whole families’ worth of providing. That’s why I’m here, because I fought for you, worked with you, you Ikin. Turns out that society doesn’t like that too much, and my partner died because of that fight. Stress got him. Now I’m here. I’m here because I wanted to treat each caste with some respect, long as each one of us works. So don’t say I’ve never fought for anything.”

She sat down. The silence was squeezing me tighter than Earth gravity.

Ihsan brushed her stringy yellow hair from her face and looked at Durada, then simply said, “Thank you.”

I tried to formulate something brave to say, because it seemed appropriate for Chloe or me to rally the troops, as it were. But Budur, reddish hair and round reddish face and all unassuming Senfte charm, got there first.

“We were told that we need to teach each other our skills at some point, anyway,” she started, looking around the table. “Perhaps we should start with something as simple as a get-together, after daily classes. Instead of spending our time separately, we should knit together, for example. Europa sounds cold, and I know a great sweater pattern.”

Some still had shifty eyes around the table, but we all verbally agreed to try it.

Seven

I am sorry to report, Breathe Easy, but that first day of classes was unfortunately boring.

We didn’t talk about anything like aquaculture or mending fine mesh in the air filtration system. Instead, we talked about the details of the mining operation itself. Believe me, I understand why it’s important, but … wow! Unfortunately dull.

Since most of us are here to pay some kind of debt to society, it was explained to us that the repayment will be measured in time spent on the water mining process itself, and how many barrels (about 40 gallons) of water we harvest during that time. The whole group’s water will be traded in total for necessary goods to complete the colony – while we’re being sent with seeds and training and some materials, it will only be enough for a slim start. Breathe Easy will act as our company store, but from a distance of about 7-8 million kilometers.

However, anything we do over the standard trade quota will go to our personal debts. We were assured this would not be difficult. The presenter – a Senfte this time, with traditionally dulcet tones – assured us it would take no more than a year for any debts to be paid off, because water is so necessary that it is highly valued, although market value will naturally fluctuate over time. And Europa is almost entirely water, so it will be easy to harvest – not like platinum or iron from asteroids.

Perhaps I could contribute my extra barrels to supplies for the colony. I’d like us to have some creature comforts, and maybe Breathe Easy would consider using my extra barrels to send us some entertainment?

We were then shown the layout of Rabbah, and where we should build the water harvesters. Most of the set-up is simple: barrels with pumps that will fill, and notify us with a sensor when they’re ready. The hard part will be moving them to the surface, which, we were told, is another thing we should expect to train our octopuses to do. When they reach a thin layer of ice next to us on the grand Conamara Chaos plain, they will hover there using buoyant gels that will also be activated by the internal sensor, and send out a beacon to let incoming automated mining ships know where to pick them up. The ships will drill through the new, thin ice and grab the barrels, then return to Earth. We will have to take over guiding the ships as they get within 50 kilometers of the ice surface, because not only does Jupiter have a very strong magnetic field, but Europa itself has an iron core that creates a fierce magnetism. Fortunately, this should keep us safe from much of the dangerous radiation out there in space, which we will be somewhat exposed to on our trip out there. Anyway, we played several simulations with what looked like ancient net access glasses, to guide the transport ships in and grab the barrels.

The glasses pinched my nose. I asked why we couldn’t take our lenses with us – I’ve become accustomed to the tiny notifications that pop up on my contact lenses all the time, and I admit that I feel a little isolated without them hooked into any sort of internet – but I was told that they are too difficult to maintain. With larger, external hardware, we can fix pieces that break, while we won’t have the nanotechnology to fix breaks in the gold-carbon contact circuits.

I got a nasty glare from the two Araboa ladies over that question. I would be surprised if they did not know how to fix lens technology, considering their colony is attached to our national hardware dumping ground. And of course I expect them to pull their weight – if they’re here to fix computers, then that’s what they will do!

We won’t have to wear these glasses much, the Senfte presenter insisted, just when we need to bring in a ship to mine. Side effects will be limited to a little motion sickness, perhaps a mild headache, so I’m reassured. I don’t know much about how those glasses were supposed to work, but I know that people used to wear them all the time.

I got okay with the simulation, but poor Samira kept looking peaked. She must be susceptible to motion sickness, so I will have to remember to ask some of the medical staff here for a prescription. If she doesn’t have one already, it may be because she does not feel like she can talk to the Bakalov in charge of the infirmary. They can be rude to the Ikin, the only real caste lower than them. Sometimes I wonder if it is because the rest of us take advantage of their usefulness.

Anyway, the class only took eight hours, and we got a break for lunch, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much. I’ve worked eight hours straight before, without stopping for food or water, on tasks I disliked much more. And this is necessary information, so that I can enjoy a new kind of life.

I did have an interesting discussion with Chloe over lunch. As comes naturally, we tend to spend the most time with the women in our own caste, although none of us have talked much beyond introductions and courtesies. Although Chloe is a former Gadhavi, I have noticed that she and I don’t have too much in common. She wants to return to Earth when her debt is paid, and although she is very smart and hard-working, I get the sense that her hard work is directed toward that goal, to the exclusion of other’s interests. Mine, on the other hand, is directed at making a new life for myself, which I think will be better for both society and me. I have no intention of coming back. We haven’t spoken much about that point, and we have not spoken recently about our court cases or Maker tendencies. But we continue to sit near each other at meals, despite an ongoing uncomfortable silence. So, when she sat down next to me with a tray of soup and gluten loaf and actually struck up a conversation, I was surprised.

“Aelis,” she started abruptly, “I’ve been thinking that perhaps all of the ladies bound for Europa have started off wrong with each other, somehow.”

I asked her what she meant, hiding behind a hushed and almost bored tone of voice.

“Well, look, we’re all from different castes, but most of us are here due to … criminal activity, to be honest. When Haven introduced us, she did so using our castes, but the thing is, we’re not really part of our castes anymore. I’ve been spending more time around some of the other women, and they’re different than what I would have expected.”

“We all have interesting skills,” I said. “Not what I would have expected out of our castes, either.”

Chloe nodded. “So that’s my point. We’re dividing ourselves up by caste, because that’s what we’re used to. But this expedition is to somewhere new and very different from Earth, and we’re going because of what we know. Also, we’re going to be stuck in an enclosed space with each other for at least a year.”

I began to catch up with her logic, but I took a bite of gluten loaf so I wouldn’t accidentally spit out anything that could be misinterpreted as radical.

“We need to learn to treat each other like equals, I think,” Chloe said. I put another piece of gluten loaf in my mouth because I could feel a defense coming on. She isn’t wrong, not completely.

Look, I realize I’m the communications person for the Europa-bound mining expedition, and this sounds bad to many of you reading this. What Chloe was actually saying, I think, was that we are becoming our own caste, in a sense. We’re not like people on Earth – in fact, many of us are working toward becoming more like the Moon Base residents. Yes, they are part of two castes right now, but they have been, as we will be, so separate from Earth that they’ve developed their own customs.

Perhaps we should consider the creation of a Rabbah caste?

Six

Alright, two good meals, the orientation meeting, and a nice walk around Moon Base, and I definitely feel better.

First, a bit about Moon Base: the name is not very exciting, I know, but it is one of the few colonies that has been continuously inhabited since before the Revolution. The site was built by NASA, and taken over by business interests about 100 years later. It was added onto multiple times, and now serves as the training center for any miners who come through. That’s how it justifies its existence, but there are people who were BORN here, citizens of Moon Base! They were divided into Bakalov and Senfte castes after the Revolution, of course, so they could officially reintegrate into Earth society.

I don’t think any of the Moon people would be able to truly reintegrate, however. They’re all lithe, short-haired, with the tiniest noses I’ve seen. Their fingers are long, and although they wear the same suits with magnetic boots as anyone else, they look like a stretched out version of a human. I’ve heard that there’s so much space between the discs of their vertebrae that they would break in half under a full G.

I’ve stared a little too hard at them, bordering on the rude even for someone of a higher caste, but none of them seem to mind. With so many rough-around-the-edges miners coming in and out of the station all the time, they must be used to questions and stares.

Our orientation meeting laid out the plan for the week that we’re here. A week doesn’t seem like enough training, but we were assured that we were all picked for this excursion because of how our specific skill sets fit together. We had tried to piece this together ourselves at the Breathe Easy headquarters, but the Gadhavi in charge of the presentation actually showed us a diagram of how our talents would work. Since I did so much gardening, I should be able to pick up on hydroponics and the aquaculture needed to make sure we have food, and Chloe’s and my sewing skills will help us repair suits and necessary industrial fabrics. Ihsan also has gardening skills, according to the presenter, although he did not say where she gathered that information from. Apparently, Zariah used to mine asteroids, so is used to space travel, and she served a stint in the Araboa colony before joining the mission with Yuda. Bainbridge Island is an isolated, salty sea-beaten land where we dump our used electronics, and the Araboa harvest what they need from the pile. I had never thought about it before, but we will need people with computer skills to help us survive, since everything will be run by a crystalline core computer. I suppose I should work to be nicer to them. I always assumed the Araboa would not be very bright, or maybe that they didn’t even speak the same language, because they intentionally did not integrate with our society.

The Senfte members of our crew, Budur and Ghadir, are also good at gardening and textiles. Budur took up knitting years and years ago, while Ghadir worked in a restaurant and not only knows a thing or two about gardening, but about preparing and storing food. I’d never tried canning or preserving before, since I wanted to eat the delicious food that I grew as soon as possible, but I guess it will be important.

I smiled at Ghadir and nodded to indicate my respect for her skills. She grinned back at me.

We also have two Bakalov ladies, Haven – whom I’ve mentioned before – and Durada, who was a farm manager. She, too, learned gardening skills, but she was a farm manager, which will make her a great help to Haven with production, and also a good person to inventory what our food stores look like. I hadn’t really thought about it, but since Europa is mostly liquid water, we will be able to grow a considerable amount of food for ourselves on the moon using aquaculture! It’s very exciting.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but, including Ihsan, we have four Ikin total. We will be performing a lot of manual labor, so it makes sense that they would be attracted to this sort of work. Besides, as of the last census, there are far more Ikin in our country, compared to other castes. No one has said, but I think that large groups of people sneak into the country and join the Ikin, since their labor won’t be questioned. I can’t blame them, we do offer a better life than other countries on the planet. We’ve managed our resources better, human and otherwise, while the ice caps melt. Some other countries don’t even exist anymore, because they were unprepared!

Anyway, our lovely Ikin crew are Ihsan, Vivien, Natsuki, and Samira. Vivien worked closely with animals, so she should be able to pick up husbandry – and apparently, we will be bringing fish eggs with us, as well as octopuses! We’ll be in charge of raising and training octopuses, like sheep dogs in fairy tales, to lift barrels of water to the surface of the Conamara Chaos region, where they will attach to a ship for transport. Natsuki apparently has close experience with hydro- and aquaponics, working on less efficient oxygen farms full of algae for years. Samira, like many of us, has experience with textiles and putting them together. She will be able to help us use our 3D printer, which can make filters for our air and water systems. If Breathe Easy is giving us a 3D printer with some specially-licensed patterns just for us, then they must deeply trust us and hope we succeed. No one is allowed to own any kind of item that might reproduce copyrighted materials, from food to clothing to lenses.

We will be responsible, as we travel to Europa, for teaching each other our current skills. That should help us get to know each other better. However, for the next week, we will be learning the basics of the mining operation itself, how the harvesting system should be set up and maintained, and also the barest information on water-based farming, octopus training (!!), soldering and computer programming, and industrial textile creation and maintenance. All of this in a week!

The presentation took four hours, total, and had been slotted between breakfast and lunch. I wouldn’t normally enjoy hot gruel for two meals – rehydrated eggs with one, stir-fried rubbery chicken with the other – but after yesterday’s distressing space travel, the warmth of the food is comforting. It reminds me of home, of soups I made for myself. I wonder if any of the food products we’re fed are grown on Moon Base, but it seems like not. Almost all of the space is taken up with training rooms, living facilities, docking stations, and workout equipment. The Earth-based people need strength and flexibility training if they have an extended stay on this base.

And oh, the base. It is truly beautiful, a centuries-old feat of engineering that I can’t quite believe. The exterior walls are metal – actual metal, not carbon filaments! – and all of this was hand-assembled by a crew of astronauts, long ago. They didn’t hire professional builders to print and weave material on-site, designed specifically for the occasion. Then again, this base is from a time when skyscrapers could not reach more than two kilometers into the air. I suppose that’s what makes it so impressive, that it is still here.

A newer layer of carbon filament, lined with plants, runs throughout the inside of Moon Base. Lichens, mosses, ivy, and roses, lots and lots of roses. The plants take the carbon dioxide exhaled by the residents and miners and exhale oxygen, which we inhale. It’s a beautiful system. I worked up the nerve to ask a Moon resident if the plants were all that was needed, and she informed me that there are also tanks of algae underneath the base, which supplement the current filtration system. I bet something like this will be useful on Europa.

Rather than head to the gym, as we were told to do, I wandered the halls of Moon Base, my feet clinking into place as magnets pulled the soles of my suit down. It keeps us mostly oriented, although I had moments of dizziness like a flashback to the trip. I’ve been told that gradually fades over the week, so we’ll have just enough time to get reacquainted with directional sensation before being shoved back out into the dark universe.

But I am, truly, grateful to be here. In a way, the end of the week just can’t come soon enough!

Five

We’ve landed. It took six hours at an unnerving high speed. Several of us got sick. The ship was barely large enough to handle all twelve of us, plus two crew members. I’m glad others piloted the craft for us.

We went very slowly at first, but the StarTram covers 2,000 miles to get the proper acceleration. We were packed in, shoulder to shoulder, sweating onto each other’s survival suits. We had helmets over our heads, in case a tiny hole in the ship began leaking our oxygen into the upper atmosphere as we left the planet. The burnt desert landscape rolled by, faster and faster until it was just a dusty blur, and the increasing pressure felt like it would melt my arms into my seat. We hit 3 times normal Earth gravity at some point before the ship curved steeply up on the ramp and soon, the cloudless blue sky peeled away and the endless black universe was revealed.

The sudden release of pressure made my head swim. We were warned that our inner ears might cause us to feel like there was no up or down, so we should focus on the differences between the floor – where our feet pointed – and the ceiling, where the tops of our helmets would be reflected to the plastic paint. They had painted the ceiling and floor different colors to make it easier for us to focus, but the effect didn’t help. One of the Araboa named Zariah, I noticed, kept her eyes tightly shut, and Yuda, the other Araboa, was whispering something to herself over and over, that I couldn’t make out through her helmet. I wondered if the Araboa had retained some kind of religious vestiges, superstitions to keep them safe instead of social structure and support. Vivien, Natsuki, and Samira – our three intrepid and sturdy Ikin – looked green, and Samira coughed up bile into her helmet. Ihsan gripped her seat. She was strapped in beside me, and we looked at each other.

“It is like capsizing boat, in terrible storm,” she said. I nodded, which made the disorientation worse.

After another hour, while the pilots checked every inch of the ship to make sure nothing had gone wrong exiting the atmosphere, we were finally allowed to take off our helmets. Samira kept her head bowed in shame as she wiped the bile off the glass.

The ship has no systems to make artificial gravity, so the pilots were floating as they checked various instrument panels and readouts. I will feel better about this experience when I can understand what they’re doing.

No one was brave enough to get out of their seats during the entire flight. I think Zariah went to sleep at some point. I hope by the end of our stay at Moon Base that we will all feel better about space travel. I don’t know how miners do it.

I don’t have the energy to write any more today, so I will pick things back up tomorrow. Moon base is very beautiful, but I need to rest.

Four

We got fitted for our wardrobes today. Two very kind Senfte were in charge of the fitting, with a Gadhavi manager overseeing and taking copious notes. We got a sneak peak at what we’ll be wearing, too. The suits look a lot like the bio-suits worn by the asteroid miners – mainly gray, with pale blue tubing to represent Breathe Easy’s color scheme. We have light gray suits made of carbon-silk layers with elastic cords throughout for our weeks in space; this suit is designed to keep our bodies from atrophying as much as possible, since we will not only be in near zero gravity on the moon, and between Moon Base and Rabbah, but while we are on the surface of Europa as well, working on making Rabbah inhabitable. That would put us at nearly 6 weeks in 0 g, which won’t render us unable to live in normal conditions forever, but it would mean we’d have to focus on retraining our bodies to exist in gravity.

I know that there were some early astronauts that lived weightless in space, or the upper atmosphere, for up to a year at a time, just to see what the effect would be. What a cruel government experiment. At least, with the Amendment to Structured Society, we know what each life is worth, and businesses can determine whether they want to risk that loss or not. Most have decided that maintaining a healthy workforce is more worthwhile, so now we all have decent housing and food, and medical care.

We have another suit, as well, for the time when we finally descend into Rabbah and get near 1 g of force again. I’m told that most of the pressure will not come from gravity as we think of it, from the pull of the planetary mass itself, but from the pressure of being under so much water. These suits are darker gray, and with the pale blue, I think they look very classy.

We were then escorted to our own, personal cafeteria – built just for colonists to help them socialize – with a recording of a copper-skinned Arany representative. His soothing voice lightened my footsteps, and I hardly noticed the other women who moved against my shoulders, in unison with the beat of his dulcet tones.

We sat down to a huge meal, full of fresh fruit, bread, and tofu for protein. A slew of colorful sauces graced the table. One woman – I think her name is Ghadir, and she has short-cropped ashy brown hair, hardly attractive for a Senfte – cooed over the food. Most of us enjoyed it with appreciative nods, but had few words for what we ate.

I did notice that, although we are all one group, and many of us are casteless, we have begun to segregate ourselves by caste. I’m not sure how long this should last, but it is comfortable for now. I sat near the door, observing the other groups of women, with my fellow former Gadhavi. Chloe is particularly beautiful for a Gadhavi, with thick and shining black hair that she ties up in the most perfect twists and braids. Her makeup is always perfect as well, not a smudge or a line out of place. She admitted to me that she takes great pride in her appearance beyond workplace and mate-finding pride, and she took a thorough interest in the clothes her boss designed and manufactured.

Apparently, she used to be a personal assistant – like me – to an Arany fashion designer. She worked almost around the clock, making sure all of the Senfte and Bakalov workers were scheduled an appropriate number of hours, that fabrics had been ordered and were on their way in a timely fashion, that machines ran smoothly and were constantly stocked. At first, her pride in her appearance simply translated into spending her stipend at her employer’s store, which is nothing new for those that work in such a flamboyant industry. But eventually, she became interested in how the clothes were actually put together, how her employer thought to put certain patterns in place. She began studying her boss’s designs at night, “working” extra hours after everyone else had left. This was easily overlooked as enthusiasm, since she was the sole Gadhavi personal assistant for a busy shop.

Like me, she caught the eye of a man – this time, one who worked on a different floor of her office building. He would talk to her in the elevator in the morning, then as they ordered coffee at the same coffee stand, and finally as they had lunch together. She says that she liked him well enough, and decided it would be a good enough match to risk getting married. So they did.

She made one fatal mistake, however: she made her own wedding dress.

Her employer had offered to design a dress for her and sell it at merely the cost of materials, but Chloe said no. An unusual response to such a kind offer, of course, so she justified it by saying that her future husband had a dress in mind for her, and the romance inherent in the Arany heart allowed the soon-to-be bride to get away with her secret plan.

Chloe began stealing, in the tiniest bits and pieces, fabric from her shop. She sewed them together at night to get the hang of certain stitches, because hand stitching is no easy matter. Finally, “working late” again one evening, she put in an order for a mid-range silk, hoping that the store’s bank would not suspect almost a million missing dollars. Her employer almost never used that type of silk, designing as ze did for Arany movie stars and Hou families. But Chloe thought she could get away with it, because no one else in her office checked her work.

She was almost right, too. The bank, naturally run by meticulous Gadhavi and overenthusiastic Senfte, did not notice what they termed a “clerical error” for more than a year. By then, Chloe had finished the dress – almost bleeding out a few times from sticking sewing needles deep into her fingers – and walked down the aisle. She had been married for two months when a letter came to her office. “Urgent!” it said. “For the head of the finance department.”

Since that was Chloe, she opened it to discover that the bank had found the uncharacteristic spending pattern in the shop’s tax reporting. The bank wondered if the problem was known. They also offered a discount on fraud protection services.

Chloe ignored the letter for weeks, but eventually another one came, followed by another a mere week later. The bank was very concerned about the problem and wanted to ensure that their long-time, valued Arany customer knew about the issue. Chloe hid the letters and pretended like nothing had happened, but finally, a bank manager showed up and talked to her employer alone.

Chloe was fired, her husband sued for divorce, and her parents disowned her.

She said she was leaving the courthouse, after signing official de-casting papers, when she saw the advertisement from Breathe Easy slice across her vision. It said the company needed skilled people, regardless of caste. She began to obsess over her hand-sewing skills, and how that might translate into survival. Just two days before she was shipped off to the Bainbridge Araboa colony, her lawyer finalized a deal with Breathe Easy so that she would pay off her Debt to Society in a year.

She’s not looking forward to learning too many more skills, she says, and doesn’t like the idea of sweaty labor or getting dirt under her fingernails. But she sees potential in how our survival suits are designed, and thinks she could learn more useful information about the materials, how they work together, and how our suits could be improved. I hadn’t thought about it before, but we will probably need to repair tears and worn holes in our clothes. I’ve dealt with such things before, on my gardening clothes. Patches work fine for well-used, Earth-based clothing, but what about patching something on Rabbah? Or in space, for that matter?

She also has more direct experience with keeping books than I do, so that could be useful with shipping items to and from Earth. Someone will need to keep careful track of what we receive and how much raw water we send.

I think she will be a very interesting friend.

We depart for Moon Base tomorrow. I try to write something in the evening when we land.