Aurora (5 page)

That evening as they eat a dinner of salad, bread, and turkey burgers at the kitchen table, Freya says, “So, are there really ferals? Can there be people hiding in the ship that you don’t know about?”

Badim and Devi look at her, and she explains: “Some of the kids in this town say there are ferals, who live off by themselves. I figured it was just a story.”

“Well,” Badim says, “it’s a little bit of a controversy on the council.”

Badim has been serving on the ship’s security council, and was recently made a permanent member. “Everyone is chipped at birth, and you can’t get the chip out very easily, it would take an operation. Some people may have done it anyway, of course. Or managed to deactivate them. It would explain some things.”

“What if the hidden people had babies?”

“Well, yes, that would explain even more things.” Again he stares at her. “Who are these kids you’ve been talking to?”

“Just ones in the park. They’re just talking.”

Badim shrugs. “It’s an old story. It comes up from time to time.
Any time a security case goes unsolved there are people ready to bring it up. I guess it’s better than hearing about the five ghosts again.”

They laugh at this. But Freya also feels a shiver; she once saw one of the five ghosts, in the doorway of her bedroom.

“But probably there aren’t any,” Badim says, and goes on to explain that the gas balance of the ship’s air is so finely tuned that if there was a feral population it would be noticeable in the changed proportion of oxygen to carbon dioxide.

Devi shakes her head at this. “There’s too much random flux to be sure. It’s enough to disguise an extra couple dozen people, maybe more.” So to her the ferals are possible. “They could throw their salts out and grab some phosphorus and get their soils back in balance. In just the way we can’t.”

No matter which way Devi sets off, no matter how they try to distract her, she always ends up in this same spot in her head, in what she calls the metabolic rifts. Like a place where cracks in the floor have opened up. When Freya sees it happen again, a little worm of fear wakes in her and crawls around in her belly. She and Badim share a look; they both love a person who will not listen to them.

Badim nods politely at Devi; next time the security council meets, he says, he’ll mention to his colleagues that Devi feels there is no gas balance proof that ferals don’t exist. And strange things do happen in the ship, so one explanation could be that people who aren’t part of the official population are doing them. It’s more likely, Badim jokes again, than it being the work of the five ghosts.

The ghosts were supposed to be of the people who died in the original acceleration of the ship, the great scissoring. Devi rolls her eyes at this old story, wonders aloud how it endures for generation after generation. Freya keeps her eyes on her plate. She definitely saw one of the ghosts. It was after they took a trip up to the spine and visited one of the turbine rooms next to the reactor, when
it was empty for repairs, and walked among the giant turbines; that night Freya had a dream in which the repair team forgot they were in there and locked them in, and the steam jetted into the big room to spin the turbines, and as they were being parboiled and cut to pieces Freya woke up, gasping and crying, and there in the doorway of her room stood a shadowy figure she could see through, a man looking at her with a wolfish little smile.

Why did you wake up from that dream? he asked.

She said, We were going to get killed!

He shook his head. If the ship tries to kill you when you are dreaming, let it. Something more interesting than death will occur.

It was obvious by his transparency that he ought to know.

Freya nodded uneasily, then woke up again. But as she sat up, it seemed to her that she had never really been asleep. Later she tried to decide it was all a dream, but no other dream she had ever had had been quite like that one. So now, as Badim declares that the five ghosts would be better than ferals, she’s not so sure. How many dreams do you remember, not just the next day, but the rest of your life?

Evenings at home are the best. Crèche is over and done, her time with all the kids she lives with so much, spending more time with them than she does with her parents, if you don’t count sleeping, so that it gets so tiresome to make it through all the boring hours, talking, arguing, fighting, reading alone, napping. All the kids are smaller than she is now, it’s embarrassing. It’s gone on so long. They make fun of her, if they think she isn’t listening to them. They take care with that, because once she heard them making those jokes and she ran over roaring and knocked one of them to the ground and beat on his raised arms. She got in trouble for it, and since then they are cautious around her, and a lot of the time she keeps to herself.

But now she’s home, and all is well. Badim usually cooks dinner, and fairly often invites friends over for a drink after dinner. They compare the drinks they’ve made, Delwin’s white wine, and the red wines of Song and Melina, which are always declared excellent, especially by Song and Melina. These days Badim always invites their new next-door neighbor, Aram, to join them too. Aram is a tall man, older than the others, a widower they call him, because his wife died. He’s important not just in Nova Scotia but in the whole ship, being the leader of the math group, a small collection of people not well-known, but said by Badim to be important. Freya finds him forbidding, so silent and stern, but Badim likes him. Even Devi likes him. When they talk about their work, he can do it without making Devi tense, which is very unusual. He makes brandy instead of wine.

After the tastings, they talk or play cards, or recite poems they have memorized, or even make up on the spot. Badim collects people he likes, Freya can see that. Devi mostly sits quietly in the corner and sips a glass of white wine without ever finishing it. She used to play cards with them, but one time Song asked her to read their tarot cards, and Devi refused. I don’t do that anymore, she said firmly. I was too good at it. Which caused a silence. Since that incident she doesn’t play any card games with them. She did still make card houses on the kitchen floor, however, when they were home alone.

Now, on this evening, Aram says he has memorized a new poem, and he stands and closes his eyes to recite it:

“Isn’t that good?” he says.

Badim says, “Yes,” at the same time that Devi says, “I don’t get it.”

The others laugh at them. This combination of responses happens fairly often.

“It’s us,” Aram says. “The ship. It’s always us, in Dickinson.”

“If only!” Devi says. “Exigencies never fears? Casual simplicity? No. Definitely not. We are definitely not a little stone in the road. I wish we were.”

“Here’s one,” Badim says quickly. “Another one from Bronk, Emily’s little brother:

“Ouch,” Devi says. “That one I understand. Now make a couplet out of it.”

This is another game they play. Badim goes first, as usual.

Aram smiles his little smile, shakes his head. “A bit doggerel,” he suggests.

“Okay, you do better,” Badim says. The two men like to tease each other.

Aram thinks for a while, then stands and declaims,

The next time Euan and his little gang approach Freya in the park, she picks up a rock and holds it clenched in her hand in a way he can see.

“You guys aren’t really feral,” she tells them. “Your little hole in the ground, what a joke. We’re all chipped, they do it when you’re a baby. The ship knows where we are every second, no matter how you try to hide.”

Euan still looks foxy, even with his mouth clean. “Want to see my chip scar? It’s on my butt!”

“No,” Freya says. “What do you mean?”

“We take the chips out. You have to do it if you want to join us. We’ll put your chip on a dog in your building, and by the time they figure it out, you’ll be long gone. They’ll never find you again.” He grins hugely. He knows she’ll never do it. He himself hasn’t done it, she sees that.

She shakes her head. “Big talk for a little boy! The first time they catch you off leash and check who you are, you’ll be cooked.”

“That’s right. We have to be careful.”

“So why are you talking to me?”

“I don’t think you’ll tell anyone.”

“Already told my father. He’s on the security council.”

“And?”

“He doesn’t think you’re a problem.”

“We’re not a problem. We don’t want to break anything. We just want to be free.”

“Good luck with that.” She’s thinking of Devi now, how what her mother gets maddest about is the idea that they’re all trapped, no matter what they do. “I don’t want to leave where I am.”

He stares at her, grinning his foxy grin. “There’s a lot more going on in this ship than you think there is. Come with us and you’ll see. Once your chip is gone you can do a lot. You don’t have to leave forever, not at first anyway. You could just come along and see. So it’s not really an either-or.” And with a final smirk he runs off, and his friends follow him.

She’s glad she was holding the rock.

Mysteries abound. Every answer provokes ten more questions. So many things change exponentially, as they are teaching her again in school now. Shift one dot just one spot, but it’s ten times bigger, or littler. Apparently this is another case of that deceptive logarithmic power: one answer, ten new questions.

What she is finding strange is that this silly Euan’s version of what is going on in the ship sort of fits with things that Badim and Devi say, and even explains some things her parents never talk about. Well, but there are so many things they have never told her. What is she, some kind of child who has to be protected? It irritates her. She is considerably taller than either Devi or Badim.