Thirty-Three

Our last supply ship arrived. Silk, carbon filaments, recycled resin, seeds for gourds and grapes and blackberries, a few more octopus eggs, antivirals, and some iodine. Vivien was pleased to see the iodine, and I made sure she smuggled it away somewhere that none of the rest of us would find it.

The supply ship is a hovering black spot on our one outside monitor.

I am glad to see the new seeds. Squash and pumpkins grow quickly, although it takes pumpkins some time to fully mature. Grapes grow slowly, but Ghadir said they could be turned into vinegar more easily, and we might finally be able to preserve some food within the year. And blackberries grow incredibly fast, every day. We may have to move the vines to a different area so we can have a little more control over their spread – I don’t want them to choke the existing plants.

I asked Durada to help plot that, but she has been very busy with the new seedlings. Tiny, tiny buds of plants popping up out of the rich soil she worked very hard to create. When she forgets other people are around, she coos to them about how well they are doing.

I don’t blame her. I feel a desperate love for these tough organisms, growing despite the tragic past around them. An Arany poet could describe the sensation better than me, but you’re stuck with my words since I’m in charge of sending these missives.

We have made several new filters, as well, and although our water still has particles floating in it, it is no longer milky or sour. It barely even has a taste, although I wonder if that has more to do with drinking tainted water for so long. Samira and Budur both took ill after consuming a few more glasses than was safe. I hate that they were our guinea pigs, but that’s how it goes sometimes. They are both recovering now – pale and sweaty after too much physical exertion, and sometimes their eyes become dark and feverish, but they will recover.

Our air has a metallic taste now, which the fresh filters seem not to have taken away. We have all felt a bit lethargic lately, and it is not merely the tension between all of us – I think it relates somehow to the air.

Tensions between us – they are at their worst. I assume that Kailash, who has taken over for both Haven and myself, communicating directly with the Breathe Easy CEOs, has already mentioned this to the higher-ups so I guess I can tell the world about what has happened. Zariah is on a union organizing tear again, but this time Suharto on one side and Samira on the other. She announced this to all of us at dinner a few days ago.

Abandoning her nutritional loaf, Zariah stood to get our attention, but it took Chloe’s voice over the rest of ours to quiet us all down. Zariah met our eyes, each one of us, and then said, “This last shipment was unacceptable.”

Vivien dropped her fork, CLANG, against her plate. Samira stood and moved just behind Zariah, keeping an eye on the Ikin woman.

Zariah continued. “Many of us have expressed concerns about our future here on Rabbah. We are all here to work,” she looked at Yvain, at me, and continued, “but we are all here because we have been told that our mere existence is a debt that we must repay to society. We were sent away because we could not repay that debt in ways deemed acceptable, not by us, but by a handful of elite families. We have been sent to prison for as long as it takes, which will be longer than our lives.”

I heard Haven behind me drop her food to her plate with a splat. Suharto, sitting at Zariah’s right hand, turned his gaze to take her reaction in.

“We must fight this injustice,” she said. “We must form a union. We are not only our own caste, but a group that supports each individual member. We were chosen because we each have skills that can only be applied to living in this colony, which makes us specialized workers. We are a specialized workforce, and we require special attention if we are to survive. We have to make that known.”

Samira began nodding along with Zariah’s speech.

“There are several of you out there who are unconvinced,” Zariah continued. “You were raised to believe you were servants for some illusive greater good. That greater good failed you, not the other way around. That greater good does not think you are worth keeping around. That greater good will, without a show of strength from us, allow us to die.

“We have a plan. We can show Breathe Easy how strong we are, because we, not they, hold the reins on this operation. Earth needs us as much as we need them, and we must not allow them to forget that.”

Haven stood, and I heard the shaking in her voice. “Breathe Easy has filtration plants all over the country, they don’t need water from Europa. We are an experiment. Which will fail if we do not work harder …”

“You said yourself that the filtration plants were failing at an expensive rate,” Samira interjected. “They would not have undertaken this project without believing that the capital was there. It is a better option than Earth’s water, and we should know that about ourselves.”

“If we do not fight back, to make them understand,” Chloe said, stomping her way to stand with Samira and Zariah, “they will never respect us enough to help us more. If we die, they will only send more colonists. And those colonists, too, will die without real assistance, more than they have given us. We can maintain ourselves, but we cannot truly expand Rabbah without cooperation, instead of condescension.”

“Men,” Suharto stood, and put an arm around Zariah, “We were sent here to protect and support these women. Many of us are former soldiers, and those that aren’t are farmers. We bring structure to their lives, but on Earth, men have lost their way in supporting their families. Women are hard workers, we must not forget that. These women have struggled, and when we arrived, we talked about what they needed, without asking them what would truly help them. Uniting with them to help Breathe Easy understand their struggles, that is what we must do. We must look past the enforced caste system, which all of us abandoned, and work together to create a truly new life.”

Budur whimpered. Haven, always violent in the face of adversity, slammed a hand down on her table. “If this is to really be a new life, then shouldn’t we imagine a new world? Why bring up archaic evils like unions when we can look ahead and work to evolve the entire system?”

Rusul, normally all slick and slimy smiles, came forward. Ghadir, perpetually by my side, shrank into my shadow as much as she could.

He said, “All of this talk is nonsense. Yes, we are all flawed and have been sent here to repay our societal debts. However, this is an opportunity. All of you agreed, when asked to join this expedition. You were not forced. You all wanted, at the time, to repay these debts.”

“Some of us were forced,” Durada said.

“That is untrue …”

“What alternative did we really have?” she asked. Rusul looked astonished.

“We had the option,” Haven interjected, “of working on other mining operations, on asteroids or on Earth. You could have all lived long lives on the Bainbridge Island colony, although some of you chose to leave and are now making trouble out of nothing. We could each have served jail sentences, had our lives eaten up with court dates. But instead we were presented a lucrative business opportunity, that applied our talents in some way so that we could take our traitorous impulses and imprint the good of society onto them. Aelis, that is what you were after,” she looked desperately at me. I vaguely nodded. Ghadir’s hands rubbed against one another in her lap, making soft shhhing sounds like a printer. Yvain put his calloused and scarred hand on mine.

“The option was an illusion,” Samira said. “If we did not take this, and especially, I suppose, if we did not have such a good chronicler in our midst,” she nodded at me and I looked away quickly, “then we would have been locked away. I certainly would have been executed, for allowing Arany to betray their world with physical work is so unnatural that my very genetics could not have been allowed to survive.”

Cyril stood and took Samira by the hand. “Yes, we Arany are only allowed to work from the mind, the imagination. We cannot apply that imagination, and we work ourselves into insane debt our entire lives to employ others just to make that imagination real.”

I did not realize so many of the upper caste could feel the same way as we workers in the lower ranks.

Rusul, and Fletcher, who had approached to stand behind his left, shuddered. Rusul was red as a warning light. He said, “This is disgraceful, this is the kind of activity that would be unforgiveable on Earth.”

“But we are not on Earth,” Chloe said.

“But we are from Earth! We agreed to the rules before we left! This is what we are, not some blasphemous union racket scamming those who give us shelter, give us food, give us a reason to keep going when we destroyed every other reason for existence!”

“The Hou broke their social contract with us long ago,” Samira said quietly. Cyril agreed, continuing for her, “The Hou do not give freely, in spite of the Declaration of Incorporated Personhood. They do not even see the lower castes as people. We are an exploitable resource that they see in terms of income. When we cost them income, we are less worth the budget-balancing effort.”

“We have to use anything we can to make them see us as people, not a negative number on their balance sheets,” Samira said.

“Yes!” Chloe pumped her fist, and Suharto joined her. Abbas, remaining in the shadow of the conversation, looked away.

Rusul left, Kailash and Fletcher at his heels.

Yvain, the gentle damaged giant, gave an appropriate pause for mourning, then asked, “How does that work?”

I removed my hand from his.

Chloe grinned at him. “I see you are interested. Vivien is going to start training the next group of octopuses in the next few weeks, and once we have them ready to work the barrels, we refuse to release them without Breathe Easy’s recognition of certain inalienable rights of ours.”

“The right to life, for instance,” Vivien said.

“The right to help, to keep trade lines open,” Yuda said. “We negotiated this many times when I was still on Bainbridge, your Hou can understand a bargain.”

“The right to keep to ourselves here, without quotas,” Zariah said.

Haven was gripping the edge of the table again. “We cannot do that, they will never agree.” Budur was crying silently into her hands, since Kailash had fled.

Yvain’s face was blank, unmovable as the ancient rock formations in the middle of our home country. He asked, “Again, how does this work?”

Zariah and Yuda looked to Chloe, who grinned like a devil cat.

“We keep the barrels hostage, but we have to cost them so much money that they must turn to us. Abbas told me about the water shortages on the edges of the country, where seaside harvesting requires fresh water for human consumption, where fresh water is the rarest. Suharto, also, says that our troops are starved for fresh water, and not sent required oxygen tanks to keep their lungs in good shape. Many soldiers recently have died of black lung, which should have been wiped out a century ago when coal mining legally ended. Only those of us who lived in large cities did not feel the shortage. Haven’s precious water filtration factories are not able to keep up with demand for fresh water and healthy air. We do that, but we force them to send us more supplies than they planned as well.”

“You allow us to die for a statement?” Ihsan’s grinding whisper cut through Chloe’s treacherous talk.

“None of us will die,” Chloe replied, “we might have lean times, but we know what we’re doing better than Breathe Easy thinks. We could be self-sufficient inside another year, no problem…”

“With Breathe Easy sending us aide from time to time,” I interjected.

Chloe sighed, “No, this last shipment was a good amount. Low quality, but a good amount. We can work with that. Zariah and Yuda and Guo might have a way to recycle some bits and pieces for printer material. We have lots of seeds. We do need more, but without our precious water, Breathe Easy will fall. The Hou CEOs will do anything to stop that.”

“Our lives are at risk,” Ghadir said. “If you worked in the garden more you would understand how little food we have.”

“I know exactly how little food we have,” Chloe answered. I have never seen a bigger, brighter smile on anyone’s face.

Ihsan shot to her feet. “YOU!” She yelled, lunging for Chloe. She grabbed the woman’s suit and shook her, then sent her flying into a stack of empty containers. Chloe landed with a yelp against the wall and slid down. Zariah rushed to her side, while Suharto pulled Ihsan’s arms behind her back and shoved her face-first into the opposite wall.

Through a film of bloody foam around her mouth, Ihsan shouted, “She destroyed the garden! She killed us all!”