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.

Twenty-Five

Budur has been shaking too much lately – she seems to have taken over the timid personality that Samira shed – so I asked her if I might take her place to guide in the ship. She agreed.

In a very literal sense, guiding a supply ship into port is a headache. I was unable to get out of bed for a day because of the pain. Ihsan stayed with me while the rest of the women – in stony silence, I’m sure – unloaded the ship. Vivien was able to finally get the octopuses to leave the barrels alone, however, so we were able to send our first water shipment off to Earth. Ihsan said the ship navigated itself away, once it felt the final barrel click into place. That hardly seems fair, but I’m sure Breathe Easy has a good reason for a human to land the contraption.

I was finally able to get up and take a look at the supplies. My fellow Gadhavi, Chloe, was taking inventory in the agriculture store room when I walked in. She looked me up and down, something behind her eyes clicking into place enough to speak to me.

“We have more strawberry seedlings than I thought we would,” she finally said. I smiled and nodded, gingerly, in hopes to avoid the strain-caused migraine I’d overcome at last.

“We have some cucumbers as well, more fish and bivalves, and it looks like tube worms,” she continued. “Nothing medicinal, not even an herb. They might have caught on to us about that, so our supplies will be low.” She raised her eyes, and I felt her pupils grinding into my mind. I blinked hard and looked away, feeling the queasiness of migraine returning to my stomach and freezing the tips of my fingers. “If you get sick again, we won’t be able to help you, I think.”

I shrugged as slowly as I could manage. “I am sure I will grow accustomed to piloting the supply shipments, if that is what you mean.”

Chloe nodded, but I could still feel her pupils scraping against the back of my head. She said, voice low and sharp, “You will help us stay on good terms with Breathe Easy, because we cannot afford for these shipments to be disrupted.”

“I know, this is only our first one,” I replied, turning my eyes away from her but trying to raise myself up to my full height. I would not allow her gaze to crush me. “I want this colony to succeed.” It is a diplomatic thing to say on Rabbah these days.

Chloe nodded again, and turned away from me.

The colony seems to be split, unevenly, and I have been trying to hold everything together like a good Gadhavi. It is exhausting. Yuda, Zariah, Vivien, Samira, and Chloe spend as much time together as they can, looking askance at Haven and Budur whenever either woman passes by. Budur and Haven return the glares, and do not speak to any of the women in that group. Meanwhile, Durada, Natsuki, Ihsan, Ghadir, and myself do our best to bridge the communication gap. Durada says that she sympathizes with Samira’s words, but it is none of her concern. Ihsan says that it is why she is glad to be gone from Earth. Natsuki is unsurprised – she is from a long line of Ikin migrant workers, and she said that she sees and understands that treatment. The Ikin, she says, have much the same attitude as the Araboa – they keep themselves separate from the other castes, only interacting with the rest of the world when necessary. However, she says, she has always seen the benefit to her for working for Hou “enslavers,” and she does not plan to stop now. Ghadir has not said much at all – she stays in the kitchen most days, working diligently on our food preservation problem. I suspect because she is taking my lead on the problem.

I took some seeds and began walking toward the garden, when Haven cornered me. “I am glad that you are awake again,” she said, but there was no kindness in her voice, only an edge of desperation. “Budur and I need your help. I am afraid that the colony is falling apart.”

“So is Chloe,” I replied in a voice just too harsh, and I had to lean against the wall to stop the vertigo. I want all of the unintentional factions to understand each other. I could feel the tendrils of migraine creeping up my throat and into my skull, so I tried to smile and took a deep breath. The air smelled a little metallic.

Haven heaved a sigh. “When you next send a missive to Breathe Easy, please ask about the next group of colonists, alright?”

“What do you want me to ask, specifically?”

“Nothing specific, except timing. And please let them know about the criminal talks that have happened here.”

“What if they leave us to die because of our conversations?” I asked. I do not think that would happen, truly, but I needed her reasons.

“They won’t,” Haven insisted. “I think, if they supplement our numbers sooner rather than later, we can put an end to this … outburst. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

So I have sent word to Breathe Easy, but I have yet to receive a reply. The situation here is growing too tense, and I am concerned we may not be able to work together for much longer. Our food reserves are, as ever, just barely enough, and our air filters need replacing. But our octopuses are working with us – we have four more babies that have hatched, which I will name soon – and a few tomatoes finally. We are successful in our own way, I know that we can be of use to Breathe Easy with just a little more assistance, although it might be more useful in the form of supplies rather than people. But whatever the company thinks is best.

Please.

Twenty-Four

I’m not sure how to start this transmission. Last week was hell. I don’t know what to do.

I spoke with Haven about Breathe Easy’s decision to send us only half the supplies we need. She was unhappy, but explained about payload and the amount of power it takes to shift something that heavy into space and how the cost has to be offset by a potential benefit, and they probably just don’t think we’ve been here long enough to have actually gathered enough water or set up the station well enough for regular shipments. I nodded in agreement as she spoke, because I don’t doubt Breathe Easy’s intentions.

We then discussed what we thought would need to be in place to receive the first supply shipment, and any last minute pieces we would need to put into place in order to get the water barrels underway. I asked Haven to talk to everyone about the shipment, and more specifically if she would ask Zariah and Yuda to get the glasses ready and I would pilot the freight in. Haven agreed, but it took her another full day before she called everyone to a meeting about the incoming supplies. Meanwhile, she went ahead and divided up mining tasks to everyone, which seemed to overexcite the group.

I just kept my mouth shut. I didn’t get assigned to anything involving mining, anyway. Instead, Durada and I worked on the garden, while Natsuki and Vivien spent long hours – more than we all would have wanted – on convincing the octopus pod that the barrels were not toys, and once moved to the top, they needed to stay there. Finally, Vivien lured them back in with promises of clams. We are all keeping our fingers crossed that they will not eat greater quantities of the bivalves off our cold deep-space base.

Zariah and Yuda hooked one delicate pair of glasses up to the computer so that we could pilot in the supply ship, but of all people, Haven assigned Budur to the piloting task. Budur did fine on Moon Base when we learned how to use the glasses through the pilot program, but she wasn’t the strongest pilot, either. I think Haven picked her because the two are inseparable lately. Haven has, oddly enough, taken well to knitting and I think they bonded over that, but it’s much deeper now. They both have a deep-rooted sense of duty without questioning, which is not unusual for either the Senfte or the Bakalov, but does not fit with the culture that the twelve of us are collectively creating on Rabbah. Not that we don’t listen to our employers, but that we have to figure out our own ways of making their rules work. Neither Haven nor Budur has been active in that quest, and instead have both extolled the virtues of hard work without specifics.

So, soft, undemanding Budur is supposed to guide the ship in to port in the ice floes of Europa’s largest melted area.

But then, once we had everything set up, Haven called a meeting. After everything was in place. She had us all stay in the common area after dinner, and explained what had happened with our supplies, that we would not receive any more medical supplies for now and that the company could only afford to send us half of what we needed. Yuda stormed out, and Zariah immediately followed after releasing a sound somewhere between a terrified dog’s yap, and a human’s surprised laugh at an unexpected joke. The rest of us sat there, and I could feel bile gathering around the seaweed and nutritional loaf that sat, like a brick, in my stomach.

“Why would they do that to us?” Chloe finally croaked. Her eyes could have started a fire, they were so laser-pointed at a spot on the ground.

Haven opened her mouth to explain, but Samira held up a thin hand to stop her. “This is what the lower castes are for, even the Gadhavi,” she said, in a very important tone. “When I worked in the film industry, that is how we treated the lower castes, as errand-runners, luggage-haulers, grunts.”

I admit that we all stared at her for a long time. Finally, I said, “Film?”

Samira nodded, and kept her eyes down – a traditional gesture of the Ikin, one that suited her exhausted eyes. “Before I was exiled, I was an Arany film star. I went to Hou parties and entertained some of the most famous CEOs on Earth today. I had three Gadhavi personal assistants and I sent them on pointless errands for my amusement. When I was in school, I spent a year wearing only silk dresses that barely fit the uniform code.”

I inclined my head toward her without thinking, horrified though I was at her words. Although I am not a fit Gadhavi caste member, I do not recall being treated with disdain by my Arany employer. The Hou have always taken care of all of us, as well, and though we do not often see their faces, we know that they want us around because they give us a place to live, food to eat, a stipend and clothes. The Hou CEOs are still generous with us, now, on this colony. While I did not fit into traditional Earth culture, I did not think I was being disrespected.

Samira put her hand on my chin and raised my head. Chloe’s laser-burning eyes were now trained on Samira, but the woman, whose constitution would not have withstood such a glare a mere few hours ago, held her head high under the scrutiny and terror reflected in the eyes around her. I could feel the thin callouses barely beginning to cover her fingers.

“What I am about to say will be shocking to many of you,” she said, looking directly at me. “But I have met the Hou, representatives of these families that run all of global commerce, and I will tell you that they do not care about you. They care about the money that you make for them.”

“That is not the truth!” Haven shouted. Her hands slammed into the table and some of our dishes fell to the floor. We all instinctively twitched away from the violent outburst – except for Samira, whose level gaze shamed the Bakalov representative into sitting back down. Budur put a hand on Haven’s shoulder.

“I spoke out a few years ago,” Samira said, “because I did not like what I was beginning to hear about asteroid mining operations. How humans were sacrificed to bring gold to Hou families, who stockpile the stuff to protect themselves against the economic instability that they intentionally create. How safety was sacrificed for a quick ship-out, and quick payload return. I have been cruel to my share of people in the lower castes, but I never wanted them to die. I never saw the point in wasting a life for money. But the Hou do. The Hou keep records of the money each of us make for them, to determine what our lives are worth.”

“We must repay them, if they give us clothes and food and shelter then that is what we work for,” Haven spat. I nodded in agreement. This has always been the proper way.

Samira shrugged. “Lives are valuable, it is true. Wasting life is, well, like throwing away groceries immediately after you buy them.”

Chloe’s head was beginning to shake with the force of her stare, but she choked out, “Is that why you are here?”

The delicate Arany woman nodded. “I made a lot of money for my Hou employers. They loved my beauty and on-screen strength. When I tried to use my power to keep them from misusing some Ikin migrant workers they fired me, and sued me for libel. I spent a year homeless, except for the hours I spent in court, and finally Breathe Easy sent this offer as a plea deal to my lawyer, who accepted without consulting me.

“I like all of you, and I am beginning to surprise myself, both because of my weaknesses where I thought I had none, and because of my new-found strengths. I have never used my hands for anything before, and I find that I love the work. But life here will be hard, because we are all viewed as expendable. Unless we can make incredible amounts of money for the company. Then they will help us.”

“You say that as though we did not know it already,” Haven growled. She slammed her hands into the table again – intentionally, while glaring at Samira – and stormed out. Budur, fingers gripped tightly together, followed Haven without a backward glance at her knitting partner.

I wasn’t sure what else to do, so I also left. Ghadir followed me – Ghadir follows me a lot these days – and I believe the four Ikin ladies also left.

Since then, there have been whispers among some of the women here. Chloe and Samira and Yuda and Zariah and Vivien, all women I like too much to see hurt. I have not directly informed Breathe Easy yet because I don’t know how to tell them all of this. No one has stopped working – we have all prepared for the arrival of the supply ship, we have all kept gardening and working with the octopus pod and trying to hatch more fish, bivalves, and octopuses from eggs. We still gather in the same place for meals, although we haven’t look at each other much in the last few days.

Twenty-Three

I’ve been focusing hard on not being depressed. Things are difficult here, although a lot of good has happened. Our water continues to be slightly briny, so Ghadir has made huge vats of shellfish and seaweed soup for us, which keeps us hydrated throughout the day. She also has been working with Ihsan on an herbal supplement that seems like a crazy witches’ brew of substances: water, thick chunks of aloe (she says it will soothe our stomachs), and a hint of coffee senna, to keep us “regular.” We’ve been drinking the brew at mealtimes, chewing toasted pieces of nutritional loaf – not so bad once it’s been heated – and soup or lettuce salad.

I still miss fruit, and I look forward to planting some strawberries.

Some of the blossoms have fallen off the tomato plants, which Durada says a good sign – they will produce fruit soon. Everyone helps keep the lettuce at bay by snacking on it regularly, and the fiber seems to help.

Samira seems content working on her knitting projects with Budur, and dreaming up weaving patterns. I am surprised that she allows her imagination to roam so far, because the Ikin are known for their sturdiness, their present-moment hard work, and not for their long-ranging ideals and vision. But she fixed the water and waste systems as much as she could, and since recovering from her illness, she has spent many hours at a computer terminal, creating different weaving patterns for these systems. She has also designed a few additions to our survival suits, which I hope she is able to implement with at least a little of the material in the next shipment, if we can spare it. When she’s not at the computer terminal or eating, slowly and meticulously in the cafeteria, she and Zariah and Chloe stand in the halls and talk. I am continually amazed that those three have so easily stepped out of their castes.

The e. Coli symptoms seem to be gone in everyone, and the waste filtration system is in fine working order, but no one has figured out yet why the water, uncooked or without additives, makes us sick. Our shellfish and kelp like it just fine, and even the algae in the air system seems to like it. It’s just us, and we don’t have enough scientific equipment to figure it out.

Oh, speaking of the water! We released our four octopus friends into the pitch-dark Europan sea, and they seem to like it there, too. I knew octopuses preferred the dark, but they love this water! They swim far away, possibly looking for places to nest, until we send out a sound wave and then they come back, congregating in the beam of our one search light near our one camera outside. Our supplies are about a week out, but I think they are already investigating the barrels and playing with them. We throw food out to them every few hours, and we will also release the wriggling fish schools out to them soon, so they won’t have to return to us nearly as often.

Vivien and I are already working on the next round of octopus hatchlings.

Yuda asked me an interesting question today. Haven has been busy “organizing” our information catalogues and books, and I have been responsible for most of the communication with Breathe Easy. Everyone knows, of course, that our next shipment is on the way, but Yuda has been especially distracted since I broke the news.

I was writing up some growth cycle information about our bivalves outside, when she came up to me and sat down. She doesn’t interact with me often, but I’ve tried hard to make myself available to the lower castes. I stopped writing and turned to her, smiling. We stared at each other for a few seconds, she awkwardly studying my eyes, then she finally spoke.

“I wanted to ask, Aelis, if you knew when the next group of colonists would be coming.”

I told her that official strategy suggested that they would come in another 4 months – at the six month point for the entire mining operation. She looked disappointed.

“Are you tired of the rest of us?” I playfully suggested. She shook her head.

“No, I um. I heard that there would be arrangements made for each of us … for partners?” She seemed very embarrassed to be asking this. I’d worry about sending information about this conversation out to the world, but I think Breathe Easy would be pleased to know that at least one of the colonists here is looking forward to some male company, so if any of you out there reading this are on your way …

I know the plan with the second round of colonists is to send mostly, if not entirely, men. Those of us that want to stay past our repayment will have the option of marrying and beginning to populate Rabbah. The base isn’t large enough, but perhaps the next ship will be bigger, or we can begin eventually get enough extra printer material, or a larger printer, and we could begin to expand the base in ways of our own devising.

I can’t imagine children down here, but I will admit that I also miss a man’s touch. Sometimes, when I’m completely alone and my mind is wandering, I miss Alan. Not enough to go back to my old life. He and I were not compatible enough to live on the same planet.

I hope that he is well.

I explained as much about the project as I knew to Yuda, that Breathe Easy would try to send us compatible men but I didn’t know how many of them would be in the next wave. If we need more workers, I assume they will send more women, with only a few men. That might create some jealousy problems, I understand, but women are traditionally harder workers than men. Men in each caste dream large dreams, and women work to make them real, as we are working to make Breathe Easy’s dream of fresh, uncontested water a reality.

Yuda seemed satisfied with my explanation and walked away. I have put a note in my latest transmission to Breathe Easy that perhaps they might consider sending more colonists sooner. Four more months is a long wait. We could use the storage capacity for more goods, as well. But, I also suspect there are more of us that miss the presence of a man than are willing to admit. Durada might be the only one resistant to the idea, because she still mourns for her dead husband.

The worst news so far: Unfortunatley, Breathe Easy has denied my request for more antibiotics. They say that what they’re sending us is already on its way, and only half of what we needed as far as printer supplies and seeds could fit in the load. It’s sad, but I suppose the transport was a specific size so that it could accelerate more quickly in the StarTram.

I have not broken the news about the latest shipment to the other women yet, but I must figure out a way to do that soon. We have to decide who will pilot the ship in, and who will communicate to the octopus pod to load the barrels. Those will need to float to the top a few days before the ship arrives. Maybe I will talk to Haven, and she can talk to everyone for me. She is here to be our leader, and although she was originally a lower caste, I can tell that she wants to lead the group. If she does not want to do it, I will volunteer to pilot in the ship if she will speak to everyone.

I don’t think anyone will be happy to hear about the smaller-than-hoped for amount of supplies.

While I’m thinking about it, we have not taken the glasses out of their containers and hooked them into the computer system yet. I will also ask Haven to speak to Zariah and Yuda, and perhaps get Budur and Chloe to help them.