Twenty-Nine

Another major tube on our air filtration system has been down for days, and the metallic stench grated on me for so long that I agreed to climb into the tube with Yuda, despite gut-wrenching misgivings about spending time with her.

We did not speak for several minutes while we strapped our gear onto our bodies and climbed into the tube. Finally, however, she turned her head slightly over her shoulder as we crawled along and asked, “How is your assigned partner working out?”

She asked the question with such an air of calmness that I almost thought she was chatting about the weather. But for me, it is a loaded question – I still don’t know what I think about the Bakalov that now lives in my room. He is gruff, the only work he does with his hands is push-ups in military fashion, he takes up space that had been solely mine. But he is gentle – he notices when I have an onset of a headache, after being near me for only a week so far, and he sleeps on the floor rather than in my bed. And he did that all on his own, without me asking him to not intrude into my tiny bunk.

I told this to Yuda, who smiled. Without my prompting, she began discussing her own partner, Guo. “His name is unusual, but he is an Araboa, all right. He loves circuitry, and we spent the whole night when he first moved in discussing computers. He has strong opinions about how to handle the system here, which Zariah does not like. I didn’t like it at first, either, but I think he might be right.”

“Have you done anything other than talk yet?” I asked.

Yuda smiled broader. “A little,” she said. “There is nothing like a sex-starved Araboa man in bed, let me tell you. I almost wish you had been paired with one of us.”

I grimaced. I didn’t mean for Yuda to see it, but she did. “What? You, so adamant that we are all ‘Rabban,’ all one caste, you are disgusted?” She spat at me.

I dodged the shot, but couldn’t look her in the eye. I didn’t mean to grimace, but I cannot imagine being with an Araboa man. I have committed some of the worst crimes against our country, and I cannot imagine breaking marriage traditions within castes. I can only hope that I begin to feel differently. I think I might be already, having experienced the kindness even an old soldier from a work-worn caste can give.

We finally emerged at the end of the tube, into the larger section where the algae were supposed to grow. I remember distinctly hanging bags overfull with the slimy green organisms against the walls of such spots, to produce oxygen for the colony. Now, in this section, a flood of brownish-green algae covered the floors, an oily scum shimmering purples and blues on the surface of their rancid pool. The bags were not punctured, but obviously sliced open, shreds dangling from where they had been mounted on the wall.

“This looks intentional,” I said to Yuda, redundant as the statement was. She nodded.

“I don’t like the way this colony is being managed,” she said, “but I would never disrupt the air supply just to make a point.”

“Who would do this?”

Yuda shrugged. “I suspect Haven,” she said, “or one of the new men. I am not sure who else would want to do such a thing. No one here has a death wish.”

“I wonder if this person has also been intentionally destroying parts of the garden,” I suggested. It seemed to make sense – acts of sabotage, of terrorism. But for what? We were all on edge anyway, why make it worse, trapped under frigid water on an alien moon on the wrong side of the asteroid belt?

Yuda agreed with me. Again, however, I have struggled with how to bring this up to Breathe Easy. After our close brush with blasphemy in merely discussing the union idea, I dread their reaction to the news that someone is so ungrateful for shelter and food that they are working to actively destroy it. Surely then our lives will be worth less than nothing. It is one thing to reject society in secret, and another thing to entirely shun the gifts given by social contract.

But I am writing about it anyway, because somehow, Breathe Easy must know. I can only hope that the men, in all their talking, find a way to help us manage ourselves.

Twenty-Eight

Our 12 men have finally arrived, but I have hardly been able to spend any time with them, because my post ship-landing migraine was terrible, and it was revived when I learned about their purpose for coming here.

Perhaps it is only my imagination, but I remember being told that more colonists would arrive to help us. But it turns out that these men are here for two reasons: to manage us, and to breed with us. They have each been assigned to one of us for that purpose, as though we were all married now.

As you can imagine, Zariah, Durada, and Ihsan did not take kindly to this. I think most of the women are barely managing with the new information, and there is so much work every day just to maintain Rabbah that I suspect they’ve hardly had time to get to know their husbands.

Budur has taken to her partner, Kailash, swimmingly. They are both Senfte, and I think they have charmed each other so much that the relationship is just working out. That does not seem like the kind of working partnership that one might want, but at least she is happy, I suppose. She was desperately unhappy, scared even, before Kailash. Now something in her is at ease. Perhaps because she has a body to hide behind, should Zariah choose to blaspheme about union organizing again.

I have been partnered with a man named Yvain. He is a former soldier, Bakalov caste, and looks as though he has been on the front lines more than the robotic soldiers normally sent out. His hands are covered in scars and he has one long slice from his right ear to the thin-skinned area where an artery climbs the neck to send blood to the brain. His hair is buzzed so short I can see his scalp, and it has a mottled gray look about it. The muscles of his arms and legs bulge against his suit, but I suppose mine do now, too, because of the hard labor I’ve been performing. I was never a traditional Gadhavi neutral feminine shape, but now I am even further from my caste’s ideal. My former caste, I suppose.

I do not know why I was paired with this Bakalov soldier. A Senfte, easy of word and smile, I could understand. The Senfte comprehend the efficiency of the Gadhavi and translate it into sweet words and lofty gestures, and they make the perfect, well, servants for the caste. If I were to aim for a lower caste, that is what I would aim for. But I have instead a battle-hardened Bakalov who speaks very little and hovers just outside of my shadow, watching me.

I only fully recovered from the migraine two days ago, and since then I have been working hard in the garden to ignore my new shadow. Natsuki, I found, has been doing much the same thing, an attempt to ignore her partner, Fletcher. She told me over the cucumber plants that she doesn’t like him – he is an Ikin, but he wanted to be an Ikin, he chose that life having worked his way out of the Araboa colony on Bainbridge Island and sued for a place in society. He does not really understand Ikin at all, she said. We whispered over the tomatoes while Yvain and Fletcher stood by the door. I’m sure they heard us, but they didn’t care, and they didn’t leave.

For the most part, it seems like the men have not contributed much physical labor at all. When they are not studiously watching us ladies, they meet in the common room and talk. They talk for hours. They sip water like they were relaxing in an oxygen lounge with energy drinks – some have even brought e-cigarettes that they smoke. As though we needed more steam clogging up the air systems. Will they receive refills for their cigarettes in a shipment? I secretly hope they will not, but becoming a caretaker for a group suffering withdrawal will take too much of my already full time.

Yuda and Zariah maintain the computer systems, organize changing the filters for our air and water and waste – which we must now do twice a day, in part because the last shipment of material that arrived with the men was lower quality and does not create good enough carbon weave for the filters. The air smells metallic again, and the water tastes a little dirty.

The ship they arrived on had a detachable piece, apparently, that flew a load of water to Earth and left a bit of ship behind for us to build onto the station. I caught up on transmissions to and from Earth yesterday – a task that Kailash took over while I was ill – and it appears that the water had some contaminants in it, and therefore Breathe Easy will dock our supplies until we can find a way to fix the problem. Perhaps it is everything we have added to the sea since landing here? I don’t know how we can filter the water ourselves, if that is the case. Perhaps it was just the barrels, though. I will make a point of examining them before we send another shipment. 

Vivien released the new octopuses into the ocean while I was unconscious. She says they are doing well, but the original four are more and more lethargic. She cannot bring them inside for fear of breaking the ancient, rusted hydraulics system, which is fragile enough without anyone touching it. However, she said she thinks they may be getting sick from the radiation, since they are exposed to it every week when they bring barrels of water to the surface of Conamara Chaos. She asked me to request iodine in the next shipment, which I did, but I hold no hopes of receiving it. We still have a number of octopus eggs, and if our lives are as disposable as Zariah and Samira think they are, then surely Breathe Easy will not care for the lives of an octopus pod.

The talk of unions seems to have calmed for now, although the colony is still split along the same antagonistic lines. However, I noticed that some new damage had been inflicted on the garden while I was unconscious. I wonder if the two situations are related. I do not know who would do something so stupid as to jeopardize the lives of 24 people by harming their only source of food. When I told this to Ihsan, she laughed at me and said, “Someone who likes the taste of nutritional loaf.”

I doubt that it is Ihsan, however. She may dislike having a forced husband – again – but she would not jeopardize the hard work she has put into that garden. Nor would Durada, who swore never to marry again. It could be any of the ladies who wanted to unionize, but it could also be Haven, angry at the rest of the group for a situation that she put herself in. If she never suggested mining Europa, then she would not have been forced to leave Earth.

And the rest of us would have no way to pay our debts. In a strange way, I am grateful to her, although the situation in Rabbah right now is so tense I might develop ulcers.

Now that everyone is going to sleep for a few hours, I think I will check the barrels. I am still trying to work off a different schedule than the others. I don’t know that I want to have a meal with Zariah and Haven for some time.

Twenty-Seven

We have some major problems and I don’t know how to speak to Breathe Easy about it, so I will write it here and hope for the best.

Ghadir has been unable to preserve any of our food stocks. Other than nutritional loaves, we have no food buffer for shortages. We have no way, through brining, drying, or fermenting, to save food for lean times ahead.

And we will likely have lean times soon. Our lettuce, which was exploding all over the garden, has disappeared. Our few tomatoes are gone. The new plants continue to sprout, but I fear for them. The fish eggs are gone, as well, and that means the octopuses will continue to eat the bivalves off the sides of Rabbah. We added more – tube worms, which will become huge veiny red creatures, along with mussels, scallops, clams – but it may not be enough to buffer us against the cold of Europa’s oceans, because once we release the new four octopuses, they too will eat the animals off the sides of our station. I wish we had never introduced them to this source of protein, but they are meat-eating animals so they may have died from lack of nutrients. It is hard to know, now.

And the four octopuses outside appear lethargic. Vivien thinks they have caught some kind of disease, which means there might be viruses that we could be susceptible to. There is no way for a pathogen like a virus to spread from cephalopod to mammal and infect both, but I am still concerned about the potential for us to get sick again.

I insisted all the women use the vaccines that Breathe Easy sent us, and I made sure they all complied. I am less well-liked than before, although I still believe most of the women only spoke to me to sway me, the one person communicating with Breathe Easy, to their side.

I cannot wait for the men to get here to calm this situation down.

Here is the strangest experience, which I have already reported to Breathe Easy and which they have not yet responded to. Zariah has suggested we form a union. I did not know what a union was until she explained it, though. This was a few days ago, and I had made a rare appearance in the common room for dinner, because I had been working all day and missed a meal and was generally exhausted.

Everyone was leaning intently over their bowls of clam and tomato chowder, even Budur and Haven, as Zariah was speaking to the group. Everyone turned as I walked in, and Ghadir jumped up to grab soup for me. I took it from her as I sat down, and Zariah said to me, “Ah, good, we haven’t seen you in awhile, Aelis. We were just discussing the future of Rabbah.”

I nodded, although my stomach knotted up. I gulped a bite of acidic chowder anyway, hoping that the knot was mostly hunger.

But Zariah was talking about something treasonous. “I was telling everyone that we should Unionize.”

I looked around. Before, when I was a child, I had heard this term, and it was always accompanied with a sneer of disgust. I didn’t really know what it meant, until Zariah explained it. I have no idea how she discovered the concept.

“It’s all blasphemy,” Haven said, and scowled into her bowl. Budur’s eyes shifted from Haven, to me, to Samira, her former knitting companion, who stood statuesque and defiant against Haven’s official disapproval.

Samira stood as well. “It might be the best way we can protect ourselves,” she said. Chloe, Yuda, and Vivien all nodded.

“I don’t know what this discussion is about,” I said, “but I have been doing everything I can to express our needs to Breathe Easy. They’ve sent us more supplies on a regular basis, we’re doing well with mining, and the next round of colonists will be here very soon. They clearly want us to succeed. I don’t know what we can do beyond that.”

Budur nodded enthusiastically. Ghadir looked terrified, caught as she was between Yuda, Zariah’s near-constant companion, and me.

“Aelis, do you know what a Union is?” Zariah asked, face tilted up so she had to look down the length of her thin nose at me. I shook my head “no.”

“Despite what you may have been told by your corporate masters,” she continued, “a Union is not a bad thing. It is a group of people with skills that are necessary to keep a business running, who band together to ensure their needs are met.”

“Our needs are met,” Budur said softly. Haven had raised her eyes from her bowl, and her pupils were now burning lasers at Zariah’s head. I remembered the keen headache that hyper-focused stare had given me and gulped a huge bite of soup to distract myself.

Zariah, however, seemed not to suffer from any kind of burning pain, and instead reflected the laser glare back at Haven. She said, “This company does not care if we succeed, they just want their profits. They have used vital shipments as leverage before, and they only continued when we proved we were able to mine the water from Europa. How long will that last? Until they find an easier way of getting water. Until they have so much water that they don’t need us anymore.”

“They have given us food, shelter, medicine, and structure,” Haven replied. “That is all they must give us. They did not have to give us even that.”

“But they will let it all fail, replace us, if they want!” Zariah retorted.

“And what of that!” Haven slammed her hands – a violent habit for emphasis and commanding attention, I’ve noticed – into the table with a crack, shivering bowls and splashing red soup. “All of you are criminals, the worst scum that could be on Earth, who defied the social contract written up between the corporations that provide for us, and the caste system that keeps us functioning. Humans would have destroyed ourselves a century ago if not for the Declaration of Incorporated Personhood, and yet people like you, Zariah, and like you, Aelis, and Ghadir, and Chloe, and Durada, keep pushing those boundaries too far. You do not accept the undeserved generosity you receive every day from these businesses, and instead seek something else, something you think might be better. But there is nothing better, there never was a solution that worked this well! And now you put all of our lives and livelihoods in danger with despicable words! If Breathe Easy allows us to die, so what? Our lives are worth less than nothing anyway!”

Zariah almost launched herself across the table, but Samira and Yuda held her back. Budur leapt to stand by Haven, and the rest of us cleared back away from the table as fast as we could.

It only took a few seconds for the physical restraint to calm Zariah down. Haven’s fingers were white with gripping the edge of the table. But they stayed locked in each other’s fiery gaze for long afterward.

Samira finally put an arm between the two, as though she was a grounded connection and could dispel the electric shock building between them, threatening to kill us all. Haven leaned back. Zariah looked into her soup.

Samira, stately but shaking slightly, looked at Haven and said, “Please tell us, Haven, why you joined this group? You talk as though you were the only innocent civilian among us.”

Without releasing her grip, she said, “The CEOs of Breathe Easy asked me to manage the project.”

“And you said yes?” Samira asked. “It was as simple as that?”

“I have worked for Breathe Easy for my entire career,” Haven replied. “I managed a water filtration plant on the Eastern Coast for a decade. I am good at my job. They recognized that. They asked me to manage the Rabbah Expedition, a bigger project.”

Samira nodded. “So there was no reason they would have wanted you off Earth?” Haven was a statue. I thought she had begun to meld into the printed carbon table. When she received no response, Samira continued, “One night when I was too dizzy to sleep, I read the personnel files on everyone on this mission. They are freely available in the archives, but not easy to access. Still, I think we should all read them now, to get to know one another better.” She looked around. “We, including Haven, are all society’s rejects for one reason or another. We are listed as ‘repaying our debts,’ but that does not even begin to cover our crimes. Including Haven.” Haven was beginning to return to human, I thought – her shoulders were shaking, which shook the table. I picked up my soup, not wanting to create more work for Ghadir if my food spilled.

Samira kept relentlessly on, speaking directly to Haven again, “You broke the caste regulations. That is why you are with a group of criminals. You spoke directly with the CEOs of Breathe Easy, anonymously through email, to suggest this mission rather than continue the failing attempt to maintain their water filtration plants. The oceans are growing filthier, as more and more land and abandoned cities are swallowed up, and the cost of maintaining the factories is getting too high. But with water on Europa – knowledge that a Bakalov should never have gleaned – it will cost the company less in the long run to suck all of the precious liquid off of this moon and bring it to Earth, than to maintain a large workforce that constantly fixes and cleans the factories. You should never have been smart enough to figure that out. And when the CEOs realized they could send you away from the entire planet, instead of taking you to court, they decided to side-step infamy and “promote” you instead. They, too, have broken that law, by not reporting your criminal activities to the government through lawsuit.”

Samira sat down. Haven’s arms began shaking the table.

Zariah, former Bakalov as well, furrowed her brows together and stared at Haven. “You are a criminal like us, then.”

Haven picked up her bowl and threw it against a nearby wall. I took that opportunity to exit as quickly as I could. That was a good move on my part, I think, because many women had bruises and cuts the next day. I had to sew a thick laceration in Budur’s arm, which tore through her suit and left fibers embedded in her skin. I gave Yuda painkillers for a nearly-broken jaw, but there was little else I could do for her. She will just have to keep her mouth shut for a few days.

Chloe and Samira are working hard to sew up the damaged survival suits, but it is not easy going since most of our supplies have been used to weave new filters for the air system – which still smells metallic to me. Budur has refused to help, and even moved into a room on the opposite end of Rabbah from Chloe and Zariah.

What a waste. I hope the men can work something out for everyone when they arrive. Men are better at politics than women.

Twenty-Six

Good news from Earth! Breathe Easy’s communication finally came in – delayed, I think, by our position around Jupiter at the time – and they received our first shipment of water, which they say filters very well and is higher quality than the organic-tainted stuff on Earth. They are sorry about our discord and will send more colonists to us immediately, in a large ship with far more supplies than we asked for. In the meantime, they had already sent another supply ship our way with medical supplies, from pain killers to bandages to vaccines, and they are also sending more printer material so we can focus on making filters. The air stings metallic on my palate when I breathe, so Breathe Easy’s beneficence makes my heart spring with excitement.

I helped Yuda clear out one of the major air vents a few days ago, and it looks like part of the reason for the metallic smell is dying algae, leaking out into the vent and corroding the entire tube. We cleaned up the spot as best we could, and that seems to have reduced the odor for now. The dying algae had fermented in their bag until built-up gases burst a hole, and the acidic organic material spread over a 2-foot span. We budded some algae off another colony in a different vent and moved them into the dead colony’s space. All the other algal colonies seem to be doing fine, but we’ll have to monitor that tube for further corrosion. If the metallic smell doesn’t go away, we may have to shut it down until we can get enough printer material to cover it over. That means shutting off parts of the colony, too, so less air will be needed to fill the colony.

I piloted our latest supply ship in and had another raging migraine, but the exhaustion afterwards was less intense. I dislike being incapacitated for an entire day, but this time we have pain killers, and I think Ghadir slipped a large dose into my soup before I slept for 12 hours straight. I do feel better, though.

I hear the older octopuses play less with the barrels now, and simply move them up near the melted surface for extraction. They are stealing lots of our shellfish, though. Vivien thinks that is because the fish schools we attempted to set up are too able to hide from them on the other side of the moon. Europa is not a large place, exactly – it is just a bit smaller than Earth’s moon – but octopuses do not normally migrate, while fish schools swim everywhere. The octopuses are more likely to stick close to “home,” Rabbah, while the fish may have disappeared forever. We have more eggs, so we’ll try creating some schools again, but Vivien is skeptical.

Ghadir is having a tough time preserving food. She tried to begin a salt-based fermentation process with some of our new, tiny tomatoes, but the batch spoiled almost immediately. She also tried to dry some of the kelp, hanging it for days in the common room until that whole quadrant of the ship smelled like fish – which I admit was a welcome relief from the metallic sting at times. She says that, because we’re surrounded by cold water, it’s like nothing can dry – our air is already saturated with moisture, so it cannot hold any more water particles. So we won’t be able to preserve anything through drying, ever. Unless, I suppose, we end up with such a large station that it takes up the entirely of Europa, and then we might have winds blowing through the human-made facilities. But for now, we have so little space that the moisture from outside, along with the moisture from our breath, hovers in the air.

I wonder if it will be corrosive, like the acidic dead algae. We might consider re-lining the old sections of the station with carbon fiber sheets, so the metal isn’t so exposed.

The Ikin – the three of them, now that we know Samira isn’t one – with Durada’s help have been hard at work in the garden, planting the few new seeds. We have some sprouts already, which indicates good things about the soil they created. Vivien and Natsuki have begun training with the new baby octopuses, and they say it is going well. I dropped by only to name them, at Vivien’s request – this group is more orange than the previous one, with two dull orange ones that I’ve named Olga and Oliver. Oliver has a gray-tinged underside, while Olga’s is bright white. I’ve named an almost deep golden one Othniel, and finally, we have a rusty deep orange one named Ophria.

I have stayed away from most interactions with the women, working off their schedules unless requested, and eating strips of chewy kelp and clams, along with the once-dreaded nutritional loaf, by myself. Tensions between pro- and anti-Breathe Easy groups are at their highest, and everyone is trying to get me to communicate their story on their behalf. Fortunately, a significant group of us are neutral – Durada, Ihsan, Ghadir, and myself. I think Haven has stopped speaking with anyone at Breathe Easy because she wants me to do all the talking for her. Natsuki works more closely with Durada and me, but I have seen her stop and listen as Samira holds court in the echoing passages, Zariah and Chloe and Yuda all attentive adoring eyes and smile-creased mouths.

I admit that I haven’t communicated anything to them unless it is a note about our supplies or mining operations.

Oh, I received a message from Breathe Easy with the list of new colonists headed our way. It looks like we have entirely men, which made me blush when I explained it to the other women. Neither Ihsan nor Durada looked excited about the influx of men, but Budur and, oddly, Yuda looked excited that we had specifically male humans arriving in the next few weeks. Everyone else was neutral about it. I am not sure what I think. I was excited for this new life when I left Earth, but at this point, I don’t know how I feel about the implication that we should populate Rabbah with a new generation. We are survivng, but nothing is stable enough yet to house another 12 people safely, let alone dependents.

I am not criticizing Breathe Easy, and I am sure the men will be able to fend for themselves as much as necessary. I am merely concerned about the short-term strain on our resources, combined with the existing stress on Rabbah already.

Here are the men joining us. I was only sent their names and castes, so I do not know what skills they have to contribute, but I’m sure they, like us, were chosen for a good reason.

Kailash – Senfte
Rusul – Senfte
Yvain – Bakalov
Suharto – Bakalov
Payam – Bakalov
Vahan – Bakalov
Bulus – Ikin
Cyril – Ikin
Dagon – Ikin
Abbas – Ikin
Guo – Araboa
Fletcher – Araboa

There are no Gadhavi, which makes me a little nervous. This means I am intended, as is Chloe, to pair up with someone of a lower caste. I admit, I felt insulted at first, but, well, I’m not Gadhavi anymore. I’m Rabban, of Rabbah. And these men will be, too.

It will be interesting to get to know them. They arrive in two weeks.