Thirty-Four

Ihsan has been locked out of sight in a storage area for a week now. Bulus, her partner, assures me that she is being fed and given water, but simply not allowed out. He has taken all of her shifts in the garden, and has set up a blanket and pillow outside of the storage area so that he can speak with her at night.

A few days ago, Fletcher and Rusul, with Vahan’s help, attempted to capture Chloe. She is still recovering from deep bruises and gruesome scrapes, but escaped her attackers easily. Vahan, it turns out, has a congenital heart defect, a disease that cannot be spread, but which he was born with. A Bakalov cannot be so weak. This, he said as I helped him sit up and eat in our still-makeshift medical bay, is his crime.

“Really, it is my parents’ crime, for reproducing when they knew this was a possibility, for allowing me to be borne, for raising me, a drain on planetary resources,” he said. “I managed a factory for Breathe Easy for my entire adult life, but I have been less and less able to breathe these last dozen years, less and less able to hide my deformity. Rather than continue to drain the company’s resources, I agreed to come out here and make my way for as long as I have left.”

“You might be able to save something, go home in a year or two,” I suggested, although I know that is not what he was implying.

He shook his head. “It is amazing I survived the trip to Europa. I will die here. Perhaps my contribution can make life easier for you, for a time.”

He is back in his room recovering now. I don’t know how many people knew about his heart, but surely the men noticed something wrong with him on the way out to Rabbah. For Rusul to use him so, as brute force when there is hardly any force left in him, I cannot understand.

No more sabotage has been committed, in the meantime. Chloe and Vivien had a falling out over the animals – Vivien worked so hard to raise those octopuses, and now they are gone, allowed to die for some premise that did not involve them at all. Chloe maintains that they were dying anyway because of radiation exposure. Vivien thinks that Chloe may have called them and forced them to move barrels too often to the surface, increasing their exposure, forcing them to die faster. They could have lasted until we received the iodine, she insists. I am not sure who is right.

Yuda and Zariah spent several days locked in hushed and intense conversation with each other in the common room, much like the men used to. When they finally emerged, they had a message composed to Breathe Easy’s managing family, the Chen. They asked me to send it, but Kailash jumped in and insisted that he should be the one to send it. I am relieved, because I did not want that responsibility. I will continue to send these entries for the public, uncensored, for it is important for the CEOs to understand what is going on here. I do understand that Zariah is afraid – she is afraid of dying, of failing through no fault of her own. But I also understand Budur’s fear, of failing because her companions, who should have helped her in her quest, chose for her to die.

It seems like everyone is choosing everyone else’s fate. I admit, I did not like this about living on Earth. Not only did I not fit into the Gadhavi caste, not only could I not strive for the same goals as my fellow caste mates, I could not understand why only one group – the Hou – could decide the fates of everyone else. I didn’t want to say so before, but we are already in so much trouble with Breathe Easy that it hardly seems to matter anymore – I never liked having other castes above me. We’re not supposed to have anyone above us, exactly, just helping us, managing us, providing for us in some ways, but in truth I never saw that group provide more than the basic necessities. Small apartments, low quality food. I was constantly made to feel as though I were in debt to the Hou, when I never even met a Hou in real life. I only ever met a handful of Arany, and I was not supposed to look them in the eye. What would happen if I did? Would I have been sent away to a smaller apartment, a camp outside the city? Would I have been divested of caste? Most likely, I would have been dragged to court, and that happened anyway.

But I don’t want to punish the company that sent us into the wilds of the outer solar system. We need their supplies, and this truly is a chance for me to discover my true self as I build a new life. To plot and scheme in a gang, a “union” as it was once politely called, will only make our difficult situation worse.

I suppose I should be thankful for little things, to mitigate the bad. I cannot smell the air or taste the water anymore. I hardly notice how thick it is when I take a sip. I’ve managed to stay more hydrated than some, Samira and Budur being two whose delicate sensibilities prevent them from drinking or eating too much. Budur finally gave up on the knitting groups. I had managed to make a square of scarf, which I gave to her to add to a blanket she was making. She says she’s been cold lately, which I don’t understand because it has been sweltering, with the weight of carbon dioxide and grime hanging thick in front of our faces. But she was grateful for the contribution.

“I’m glad you’re on our side, Aelis,” she said.

“I’m not,” I reminded her.

“But if you’re not on their side, then we’re glad to have you,” she said, and shivered.

I think she might be getting sick. There might be a contamination in the water or food. I’m surprised I haven’t caught anything, between cleaning up mountains of dead organic material and drinking a glass of putrid water every day.

And Samira has been holding her regular court in the common room now, not just behind hands in dark hallway corners, but in plain sight, in plain voices. She lounges against a stack of crates, sweating from the weight of the air, and explains to her cult how terrible and selfish the Hou are and how they, the unionizers, are right in their quest. Fighting each other, in her speeches, is a noble act that will ultimately reunite our group – but she fails to explain how infighting will help.

I can only imagine how fired Chloe’s imagination was by the speeches. Zariah has begun using larger words, more like an Arany and less like a Bakalov or Araboa.

I sat in on one of Samira’s long speeches just last week. She discussed a party she attended as an actress, on the arm of a beautiful male Arany movie star, so they could meet the Hou producers who financed their latest production, which was a love story embedded in the tale of the revolution. They couldn’t play anything other than Arany, of course, and yet there were no Arany before the revolution, so they had to play entertainers united by their dream of being sponsored by rich patrons.

“I was approached by one of the producers,” Samira said to her rapt audience. “A short man, thick dark hair, not unattractive, but shorter than I, and I’ve never liked men shorter than myself. It is not unusual for the Hou to approach us when we are at their parties, and we are trained to respond somewhat in character. So we talked, and I complimented his patronage profusely and told him how they had helped us be the best versions of our selves we could be. And he smiled, and he kept smiling at me, sizing me up, and hardly said a thing while I rattled on. No other Hou approached me, so I kept talking to him. After a few minutes, he grabbed my arm and hauled me into a back room. I barely got away without being raped. I was young, and I didn’t know that was expected of me. When we left, my counterpart asked me how many Hou I had spent time with, and I told him one. He was surprised.

“This is how the Hou see us. All of us. Just resources to exploit at their whim, and it is our job to keep them pleased.”

Cyril held Samira’s hand, and patted it. Zariah handed him a glass of water, and Chloe was deep in thought. I got up and left, without realizing that Yuda had followed me out until she spoke.

“It was good to see you in there, Aelis,” she said. I jumped and turned to her.

“I had to know what all the fuss was about,” I replied, and kept walking. However, Yuda stepped in front of me.

“We are glad that you are on our side, Aelis,” she said, and looked pointedly at me for an answer.

“That is what Budur said to me a few days ago,” I replied.